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Where The Girls Are Essay

1304 Words6 Pages

In the introduction of Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media, Susan Douglas argues that the war on women in media is complex due to the fact of the struggle between femininity and feminism that has been presented in American media to define gender roles. She identifies the cause for this ambivalence as the media’s obsessions with defining femininity and masculinity according patriarchal ideology. Douglas develops her claim by giving examples of contradicting sexist imagery in American media that had a profound message on how girls should look and behave.
One of the examples she gives is the Shirelles., who were one of the few African American girl groups of the 1960s with top hits that influenced a generation. Being African …show more content…

Ariel is portrayed as a feisty young woman who defies her father, saves prince Eric from drowning drown and battles killer sharks while looking for sunken treasures. She is s the all-time brave, beautiful feisty heroine. However, her waist is to tiny for the human body, and her only goal in the movie is to marry prince Eric at the age of sixteen. Sadly, the antagonist is an overweight woman who wears too much makeup. So, Ariel still being this positive image to girls still fits right into the stereotype that all girls want to be is married especially to the hot prince Eric. , Another example is Barbie, the most successful girls doll of all time. Even though Barbie wasn’t always portrayed as society wanted her to be, the way she looked gave young girls an unrealistic beauty standard to achieve. Barbie had a waist to thin for the human body, long blonde hair and only represented white women. With Barbie, society was telling all young girls that a true beautiful woman was white women with long blonde hair, blue eye., unrealistic proportional and super tall. None of which can ever be achieve by a normal white woman. Barbie excluded people of color and weight, and is very sad reminder to young girls that their own natural bodies aren’t perfect by societies standards and what is deemed desirable to be desired by another

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