Analyze - Respond: Gender and Sex Representation

Diana Orlandi

Analyze / Respond Paper #2

The way in which one is seen by others defines his or her identity almost to the same extent as the way he or she sees himself or herself. This relationship between individual and society is deeply influenced by factors such as gender, sex and sexual orientation. Based on these features, people are judged and treated differently and this contrast is also reflected on way they are portrayed by media, which in turn influences the perception of different social groups. Perhaps the most powerful mean of communication is advertisement, as individuals are exposed to virtually 3,000 ads every day (Killing us softly IV, 2010), most of which are not even consciously noticed, but also music videos, movies and TV shows affect people’s perception of their surroundings.

The most powerful effect of media and culture in our life is in fact their ability to shape and define the “norms” of our society, the “implicit standards of normalization” (Butler, 2004). Not everyone is the same, yet there is a standard to which everyone is expected to conform, usually neither associated with a law or with a mathematical average. It just reflects “what people do” or, better, “what people should do”. Norms regulate every aspect of life, from diet to look and appearance, from sexual orientation to the ways in which desire is expressed, from the interactions with strangers to the reaction to a group of black men in the street.

Most ads and TV shows are conceived to be appealing to the dominant group, straight white men, and therefore often emphasize the role and importance of female beauty. The female body is exploited and used as a commodity; women are defined by their sexuality and often reduced not only to their physique, but to very specific parts of it. They become objects to look at, available at men’s pleasure. This idea of the man as the “onlooker” and the woman as “what is looked at” is already present in John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing”, in...