Jill Stark’s opinion article, appearing in The Age 19th Jan 2008, outlines in a concerned and direct fashion, that most stereotypes seen in glossy magazines have a negative and dangerous impact. She contends that there is a growing trend for woman to produce magazines, promoting healthy and realistic figures, empowering the female. The headline ‘Sick of impossible princesses, real girls fight back’, indicates to readers how fed up the author is with these unrealistic stereotypes. Stark informs the reader that the traditional content of glossy magazines, with “extreme dieting tips and air-brushed waifs in micro bikinis”, is being questioned by ‘real girls’ who are “fed up with images of emaciated models and a celebrity culture pushing them to be thin, sexy and silent.”. Confronted with these images, the reader is encouraged to sympathise with the author’s contention.
Their were people who told you to be pretty, but strong. Then there was the ideal women who was a perfect entertainer and always dressed properly. The magazines were also littered with what would today be thought of as offensive advertisements for items like vacuums and panty hose. The magazines predominately advised domestic goods and were a way of persecuting women with out them being aware of it. Most magazines were ran and edited by men who decided what should be written and the advertisements used.
For Women in America, Equality is Still an Illusion In her article, "For Women in America, Equality is Still an Illusion", Jessica Valenti subject matter is to describe the discrepancies between what is perceived as gender equality to what is really occurring in America in hopes of ending the mistreatment and injustices of women. Valenti writes this essay in hopes of disillusioning women that believe they have the same equal rights and treatments that men have in America. She conveys a certain emotionally upset tone in her work (mainly due to her being a woman) to grab the reader's attention. She uses selection of detail to show the hardships of women not only in America, but in other countries as well. Valenti provides many statistics of abuse against women here in the United States as well as examples of evidence for the mistreatment of women.
In a world where men were still predominate in the workforce, she let women know that it was ok to have a “Pink Collar” job and to use it to benefit you in whatever way that you wanted. Helen’s credo was that “We could look sexy, have a career and stay single for as long as we wished and still have an active sex life…like a man. Brown was concerned with improving the lives of woman that were stuck lower on the economic ladder. This could be done through performance, covert strategies, and cultural consumption. The new and improved Cosmopolitan magazine had headlines such as, “So you’re Bored to Death with the Same Old You.” And “Yes, you can change your image.” These headlines are used to influence women to not settle for what they think that they deserve but to go after what they want.
This made feminist activist begin to pose questions about the position of women in the media and culture. According to Lee and Shaw, “They began connecting mass media to education, economy, and politics, seeing it as a broader framework of culture in which women perform gender, negotiate stereotypes, and experience discriminatory practices” (63). Becoming aware of these representations of women in the media and the impact of those images in society, were an important factor in the struggle to produce change. Women also understood the value of modern
True Women and Real Men: Myths of Gender Men and women are equally valuable to society and everyone has their opinions on the qualities that lay within them. There is no right way to act like a man and there is no right way to act like a woman. Society has the biggest effect on genders and their characteristics. “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid’s story specifically gives details about girls’ responsibilities. “Girl” explains how society comes into play when you’re a girl and the effect it has on you in a negative and positive way.
(Media Awareness Network) Stereotypes can be problematic, reducing a wide range of differences in people to simplistic categorizations. This transforms assumptions about particular groups of people into realities. Mass media, such as movies, television, magazines, newspapers, books, music, and computer games, both reflect and shape gender roles. (Knox) Women and men are usually depicted as having extremely different roles in society, evident in the way media portray them. (Al-Ghafari) Some gender roles confine both sexes to traditional duties and responsibilities.
‘The Beauty Myth’ is an obsession with physically looking ‘perfect’ and traps the modern woman in an endless cycle of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to achieve what society has deemed "the flawless beauty" regardless of whether it is realistic or not. Naomi Wolf censures the exploitation of women by the fashion, beauty and advertising industries, particularly in women’s magazines as we delve deeper in to the chapter on ‘Culture’. She claims that as a result of being sequestered from the world and isolated from one another, the only real women’s space in modern mass culture where women can seek solidarity is through women’s magazines. Ironically, it is through the same myth that women are brought together and driven apart. These women may not share any particularly close relationship, but develop a sense of solidarity through sharing similar interests, agenda, or worldview.
Across the centuries women were repudiated entitlements equal to men and due the assembly of gender, men were given higher power above women. This has managed to disparate arguments of what is indeed the act of the woman in a gendered area and clashing for the credit of a female species (Rosenstand, 2009: 586). 3 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SEX AND GENDER Liberal feminists squabble that both boys and girls across origin are born the alike merely the area will craft them on how ought to a man and a woman behave in a gender crafted society. Sex could be described as biological contrasts both inner and external organs. Gender could denote to communal institutionalization of sexual differences; they believed gender is utilized by those who comprehend not merely sexual inequality but far of sexual contrasts to be communal craft were by men and women are crafted to behave in precise methods that could be categorized as feminine of masculine (Okin, 1989: 116).
Consistently, women are diminished by advertisers to pretty body parts used to sell products, a practice that perpetuates the glorification of this unreasonable ideal of beauty. Women’s bodies have not only become a huge money-maker for advertisers, businesses have picked up on women’s insecurities about their bodies and have capilatized on these insecurities. On one hand, advertisers heavily market weight-reduction programs and present young anorexic models as the paradigm of ideal beauty; on the other hand, the media floods the airwaves and magazine pages with ads for junk food. In 1996, the diet industry (as in diet foods, diet programs, diet drugs) took in over $40 billion dollars, and that number is still climbing (Facts and Figures 1). Young women seem to be especially affected by our culture’s obsession with weight and beauty.