The Media’s Negative Affect on Women Our society’s media portrays women in a very distorted and twisted way. Women in the media are made out to be purely sexual objects. Only images of women who are thin, over sexualized, and what our cultural believes to be “beautiful” are shown on television, magazines, and ads. Lyrics in popular music often also degrade women. Constantly being bombarded by these inaccurate depictions of how females should look and be treated has many negative effects on women. Inaccurate depictions of females in the media causes women to have self-esteem issues, become over sexualized at a young age, and makes mistreatment by males seem acceptable. In our culture the “thin ideal” is considered to be the only form of
“Research links sexualization with three of the most common mental health problems of girls and women: eating disorders, low self-esteem and depression or depressed mood (Zurbriggen)”. This is just another example of how the media puts girls at risk for self-esteem issues. Another issue that the media causes in young girls via sexualization is a term psychologists refer to as self-objectification. Self-objectification is a process in which a woman learns to think of her body as nothing but an object of another’s desire. During this process, a woman internalizes another person’s view of her body. This causes the woman to view herself as nothing more than a mere object that is looked at and judged by it’s appearance. The media causes women to expect to be treated as nothing more than objects. All of this sexualization in the media does not only affect women’s views of themselves, but also how men view women. Women in the media are almost always shown as sex symbols. This is very degrading to not only the women who is being featured as the sex symbol, but also all women across the country. One outlet of media that can be considered especially degrading to women is the music industry. The rap music industry has undergone much scrutiny for how it portrays women in lyrics and in music videos. Women are seen as solely sexual objects and are often