Objectification of Men and Women in Media

Objectification of Men and Women in Media
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Introduction
If you are a man, what would you rather watch between a football match and a beauty pageant? Possibly football. What are the odds of a (heterosexual) woman flipping channel searching for a Miss Universe event soon as the swimming Olympic finals for men comes live on air? Remarkably, while many men would happily forgo a chance to savor the beauty and sassiness of the women on show at the pageant, the majority of women will prefer to watch muscular men flexing their muscles and sweating it out. Does this imply that men are not affected by sex appeal as much as women? Not quite. Objectification is rooted deeply in feminist discourses which have dominated discussion for several decades, and continue to do so. Early endeavors to tackle prejudices perpetrated against women may have begun several decades ago, but they are ceasing every passing day as women take the phenomenon into their stride. Women have turned the tide by giving the objectified portrayal an acceptability rather than the feminist resistance of old. Muscularity is bracing itself for the same fate as that which befell femininity- objectification. Men are indeed objectified as much as women in the media, and the effects of the fast-rising phenomenon are not completely different from the outcomes of objectification of women.
Background information
Back in the 80s, critiques offered by women seemed to have a single overlapping agenda in them. They discovered that the media tended to focus more on industrial disputes at the expense of the gender debate. Research on the topics of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity was at a bare minimum or ignored in the larger media focus on issues. First was working women and those in university, who unearthed that the media was handing them a raw deal in championing for things that mattered to women. These feminists objected to the notion that man was representative of all. Second came female media personalities who fronted the concern that women missed out on roles that mattered in media, such as leadership. Women were concerned that they tended to occupy the ebb of the media structure while their male counterparts occupied the higher echelons. Third, women groups sprang and took up the fight against stereotypes. The feminist movement was truly on in several parts of the world particularly Europe, Australia, and the United States of America. These groups checked the demeaning and sexist portrayal of women in the media and society in general. These women groups achieved their goal albeit with varying degrees of efficacy.
All the Women's movements had a common agenda. The National Organization of Women (NOW) carried out a study that was published in the New York Times that aimed at the study and interpretation of advertisements and commercials. Other studies showed how women were restricted to household chores (especially in the kitchen) or playing wifely duties, unlike men who appeared as taking care of the more important things. They questioned the methodology and adjudged it to be inadequate. They were opposed to the simplistic nature of the surveys and instead championed semiotic and ideological analysis.
Perhaps it was because of this new approach that the dark corner was eventually navigated in the 90s and inclusivity was embraced in media and film. Women representation significantly improved. Even the leading roles in the film industry that they hitherto craved were now open to them. The feminist agenda also faced a stumbling block in black women who pointed at white women's moral hypocrisy at championing against gender prejudices, yet they were not speaking out against privilege. This caused a paradigm shift leading to the change of focus from being entirely on feminism to including ethnicity, class, and prejudice based on disability. Media narratives espousing that women still need saving are outrageous seeing how they have taken the media's portrayal of the image and started enjoying the attention it brings. Men will soon require a movement to champion the fight for their rights, and fight cultures like the objectification of men.
The Objectification of men
There is a slight difference in the depiction of men and women in sex-themed advertisements. Women were portrayed as more, dismembered, flawless, and passive, especially in men’s magazines and women’s fashion (Conley, T. D., 2011. p. 475). Women are also subordinated in various ways, as indicated by their facial expressions, body positions, and other factors (Collins, 2011. p. 293). These differences notwithstanding, the objectification of men is a phenomenon on the rise. Women appear to have accustomed themselves to this practice.
Long gone are the days women decried sexual objectification of the female body. Another phenomenon is rapidly taking over- objectification of men. Women appear to have made peace with their portrayal in the media- in advertisements and several fora. They have flipped the idea in their favor, such that it is now a marketing strategy for women, especially those in the show business world. They have taken it up as a show of sexiness, sassiness, achievement, and power. It is now common to see women dressed economically in music video clips, photos on the internet, posters advertising live shows, and scheduled performances. Nudity is no longer an abstract concept as naked women, leaning or lying backward with nothing on, using merely the length of their arms to conceal their bosoms, gracing the cover of world-famous magazines is normal. Women models remain ahead of their male counterparts in appearances on sex-themed adverts. This is interesting, given that the noise around feminist activism seems to be on the wane by and large. In fact, in the ads targeting youth, female models were 3.7 times more likely to be depicted sexually than male models (Reichert, 2003. n.p). Should feminists not be louder now in rebuttal this trend? Most bewildering though, is their objectification of the male body in their works, which they portray as an object of desire and sexual gratification. Is it a case of the hunter now becoming the hunted?
The media, entertainment channels, and advertisements are the major proponents of objectification. Films, television series, and literary novels have since time immemorial been dominated by that male action hero who saves the day- and the girl (whose heart he eventually ends up winning). Visuals and descriptions of the male body have dominated the narrative. Bulging muscles, broad chest, and trim waist, shirtless episodes depicting stomach muscles, and muscular thighs akin to body-builders are the objects of desire in music videos and television series, where the female participants find them irresistible. These images have a similar effect on the heterosexual female audience and have been the source of online discussions about men and how women think they should look. Phrases like 'tall, dark and handsome' and 'American height' have emerged to describe ideal sexual partners for the modern heterosexual woman due to this objectification. Men have been left worse by the growing focus on the physical attributes on display. Men are now judged first by their physical attributes before, say, intellectual ability.
Feminism has dominated headlines for a long time, yet oddly objectification of men has become the subject of discussion. Men have continued to be judged based on looks, especially body type, size, et cetera. It is perhaps ironic that the gender that has been engrossed in a perennial struggle to overcome societal prejudices happens to be at the center of the objectification of another gender. Men ...