Although women have come a long way throughout history—gaining their right to vote in the 1921 federal election in Canada—it is easy to see sexism laced all throughout mass media in the West today. Everything from turning on your television, flipping through the channels on the radio in your car, picking up a magazine at the doctors office, looking at posters while shopping in the mall, or even looking at the ads on the side of your Facebook feed. Before arguing the presence of sexism in popular culture, is important to first understand sexism as a term. According to the Oxford Dictionaries, “Sexism is the prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex”. In the twenty-first century, popular culture and mass media have become a main producer of sexism towards women, depicting them in stereotypical positions and largely under-representing them throughout the industry. In this paper, I will look at the images of women in popular culture, focusing on exploring gender roles and sexism’s part in popular culture in order to uncover some of the many ways in which sexism is quietly or blatantly fed to its consumers.
Popular Culture As A Source For Sexism
On the topic of sexism, Laura Bates—author of Everyday Sexism—is quoted saying that, “It is impossible to underestimate the impact of the fact that still, in 2014, women’s stories are not being told. That women, in those stories we hear, are still portrayed as so incredibly limited, pigeonholed and stereotyped . And that so very few of those stories are told in a woman’s voice”. Sexism in popular culture is not just about blatant misogyny, rather it is manifested in the lack of roles for women, the lack of depth to their characters and the immense amount stereotyping throughout all industries. In order to understand this idea more in depth, there are some statistics to consider. Laura Bates points out in her book that only “28% of speaking roles in 2012’s biggest films were women” and almost 1 in 3 of these roles were sexualized characters. A study found that in the top 250 grossing films in the US during 2012, only nine percent were directed by women, and women make up only 18% of “all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers and editors in the same study”. In discussing family films or G-rated movies released in America, “male characters outnumbered females three to one,” which is a ratio that has stayed the exact same since 1946. In the same genre, “not one female character was depicted in G-rated family films in the field of medical science, as a business leader, in law or politics”. Historically, women’s roles in the media have been way less realistic and far narrower than the roles portrayed by men. Unfortunately, even as society has grown and adapted and become more inclusive, popular culture has not.
The music industry has become a huge source of sexism and misogyny, except in more of a blatant, in-your-face fashion. While flipping through the channels of your radio, you may not notice right away, but the music industry often regards women in a disrespectful and unfair light. If you watch just a few music videos in the hip hop or rap genre, you might think that it is normal for men to parade around in suits or fancy clothes, while topless women dance around them. But it is not normal and it is not okay. According to Laura Bates, “Women are, almost without exception, required to bare as much skin as possible when singing, despite the lack of correlation to their vocal performance, while male artists, remaining fully clothed themselves, will strew writhing, bikini-clad women around the sets of their videos like Christmas decorations”.
The television and movie industry is not much different. Barbara J. Berg, author of Sexism in America: Alive, Well, and Ruining Our Future, says that, “Instead of realistic portrayals, we’re barraged with minimizing deviations—the sultry schoolgirl, the consumerist chick, the militant manhunter, the cold-hearted careerist. Shaped and dominated by a mass media overwhelmingly in the hands of men, popular culture has engaged in years of misogynist maligning, embracing and perpetuating sidelining strategies”. In Everyday Sexism, Laura Bates discusses the many stereotypes that have been created in order to keep women and the characters they portray in a box. She sums these many lame and incomplete notions in a harsh, home-hitting quote from the point of view of someone who has just come to earth (an alien or something) and is viewing popular culture for the very first time. If you were that alien, this is what you would think of women in America nowadays:
[You would learn that] women’s looks are the crucial factor in defining their value, that black women are to be sexualized and exorcized and disabled women pitied and portrayed as ‘strivers’, that lesbian and bisexual women’s entire lives revolve obsessively around their sexuality, and that fat women are generally reserved to perform the function of providing the butt of a joke. You’d discover that women can be virgins or whores but rarely stray into the territory in between, that we despise one another’s victories and find it impossible to resist bitching behind each other’s backs, and that in order to achieve success we are either strident, masculine and mean or sexual and manipulative. You’d see that sexual violence is our greatest danger, but also a strangely erotic and titillating fate, and that the main function and purpose of our lives revolves entirely around finding an appropriate mate.
This quote is both upsetting and unsettling. It leads directly into the effect that sexism in popular culture has on people. These statistics, notions, ideas and stereotypes directly influence a specific population, one that is terrifying… Young girls.
The Effect
One of the main effects of sexism in popular culture today, is the negative influence it has on children and their developing brains and worldviews. In Barbara Berg’s book, it says that, “‘There’s definitely a disturbing emergence over the past two decades of highly eroticized images of young women, and they’re getting younger and younger,’ says media expert Jane Tallim. It’s in the shows they watch, the magazines they read, the ads they see, the Web they surf. One study found an average twelve-year-old is exposed to 280 sexy images on a normal day”. This influx of over sexualized images and stereotyping of women and the characters they play affects the world kids these days are growing up in. In doing research, one author listed some quotes of females who felt that sexism in popular media has affected them. One young girl said that when she was four years old and she was asked what she wanted be when she was older, she was going to say a doctor but she did not because she thought that girls were not allowed to be doctors”. Mass media is negatively affecting the dreams of girls as young as four years old, what a sad reality. Young girls today are learning from popular culture to be self-conscious about who they really are. They are seeing a very narrow and shallow version of a ‘woman’ and it is not an empowering or positive image to build on at all. Laura Bates says it in this way: “‘They’ll hear songs about sluts and songs about players; learn that low self-esteem is the sexiest thing about a girl; that dangerous and volatile relationships are the most desirable; and that girls should blame themselves if they’re badly treated”. This culture that we are producing is entering around a false view of girlhood and womanhood and it is blurring the lines of reality. We are entering into difficult waters to navigate.
The Film/Television Industry
How often do you see an older woman on the silver screen? Bates teaches us in her book that in the film industry, viewers are being misled into thinking that the average age of reproduction is much lower than possible. For example, “A woman like Angelina Jolie could have given birth at the age of one (To Colin Farrell, who plays her son in Alexander) while a woman like Francis Conroy (Peter Krause’s mother in Six Feet Under) must have done so aged just twelve”.
The roles played in film by men and women are crazily different. According to research, the roles that men play—for the most part, with some definite exceptions and underrepresented groups—are much closer to reflecting the reality of men’s lives, even though they are usually a bit more extravagant or polished version. Men are represented in the media in all shapes, colours and sizes. They also usually lie at the centre of their own stories. On the other hand, the roles that women play are usually a very shallow, unrealistic, or one tract version of a woman’s life. Bates refers to the media as its own adoring fan and harshest critic. She states that, “It reflects not our reality, but a constant and suffocating stream of unattainable ideals and derided failures, dehumanizing sexualization and crushing reminders of our own marginalization and inadequacy”.
The Music Industry
The girls and boys that grow up watching television and movies, even the G-rated family films discussed earlier, are the same children that grow up to be consumers of the music industry. Music is one of the most easily attainable sources of mass media. From free streaming services like Youtube or Spotify, to background music playing in stores or elevators, it is very easy to hear the lyrics or beat of some popular song every single day. The problem, though, is the lyrics that have become increasingly sexist, misogynistic and plain rude or abusive. In Everyday Sexism, we are reminded that lyrics teach their consumer a lot. Some artists are a bit less upfront about their horrible language and connotations, like Flo Rida, who masks his sexual demands with metaphors like ‘Blow my whistle, baby’. Others are more explicit about their interests. For example, Tyga’s ‘Rack City,’ which I will spare your eyes from reading the lyrics of.
Music videos are a whole other ball game. From Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’ to Justin Timberlake’s ‘Tunnel Vision’, naked women parading around clothed men has become a normal thing, when in fact, it is far from normal. Another sign of a desensitized culture is the utter disrespect in lyrics chanting sexual domination over females. Bates points out to us that, “Some singers don’t even bother pretending to consider the woman’s consent — in the song ‘U.O.E.N.O.’ by American hip-hop artist Rock, featuring Future and Rick Ross, Ross raps about putting ‘molly’ (a colloquial term for the drug MDMA) in a woman’s champagne before ‘I took her home and I enjoyed that / She ain’t even know it’”.
Analysis
Conclusion
“I think that the everyday sexism that happens in our media and mainstream press is the biggest and most important example in this country. I just think how can we fight the other forms of sexism if everyday the work is undone and undermined by the big booming message that screams from all of these ‘WOMEN YOU ARE NOTHING, YOU ARE WORTHLESS, YOU ARE HERE FOR OUR ENTERTAINMENT AND WE WILL USE YOU AND TREAT YOU HOW WE WANT’”.
We live in a society where — like it or not — the media is written by men, for men, There’s really no arguing about that. And this media — which perpetrates and perpetuates all manner of ill-advised ideals and norms — does affect women, and their lives, every day in every way”.