Media Representation Essay

895 Words4 Pages

The media plays a huge role in how we perceive others along with ourselves. Media representation influences society and how we see different types of people and groups. Along with when groups are stereotyped and misrepresented, it puts a false idea in our heads about that group. Women get pressured in many ways through the media. Advertisements, movies, music, and politics all play a different role in how women are represented. The poem Barbie doll shows the impact media has on women through a young girl’s perspective. The media represents how women should look and act through advertisements and movies, to music and politics, and the stereotypes society has for women. First, the media has an idea of what a woman should look like, through …show more content…

This happens in a variety of ways, anywhere from music to politics. In todays age music sang and written by men often mention women in their lyrics. For example, in Robin Thicke’s song Blurred Lines there is the line “Tried to domesticate you But you're an animal”. He is saying he is trying to tame the women and silence her. He is also comparing a woman to an animal, which is saying she is wild and is uncivilized. There are many other songs that display women this way. Many people get influenced by music, so hearing lyrics all the time like this, they start to just see women as objects and that their opinions do not matter. In the end of them poem Barbie doll people only commented on how the girl looked saying “doesn’t she look pretty”, they treated her like an object just lying there instead of talking about her as a person. Even in politics women are not represented and do not have the voice men do. According to Huffington Post “The U.S. population is 51 percent female, yet their representation in U.S. Congress is only 16.6 percent”. Women do not have an equal voice in politics compared to men. This makes society think that women’s opinions do not matter. With constantly feeling silenced through the media women feel they need to prove themselves to gain respect along with be more than an