Women are mothers, grandmothers, friends, enemies, wives, co-workers, and even competition for us.
For me as a man, it is impossible for me to stop looking at an aesthetically beautiful woman, either in the street or admiring her through movies, television or magazines. Although I certainly recognize that a man will always be attracted by the visual perception of a woman, I know that not always that external beauty is synonymous of good person, sincerity and intelligence, values that I always look for in a woman beyond the physical or visual.
A woman generally looks at and pays attention to other women who have certain attributes that she does not have such as: longer hair, her height, prettier eyes, a better face, a bigger butt, among many other things. With these actions she compares or criticizes both positively and negatively. Of course, he can also admire them and even take them as an example of life.
Still, there are many men who have an image in which women are assigned by nature the tasks of reproduction of the human species, the care and education of children and the maintenance of the home with all its personal and material members. Others believe that today's women are more educated, and are incorporated quite fluently and widely into the fluidly and broadly into the labor market.
Women are presented in advertising as a product; as objects of desire or as mothers in charge of raising children, exercising a traditional role or being objectified through the ideal of beauty.
The media offer valid cultural models for identification, but this does not mean that they are always correct, sometimes they will be positive and adequate, while in other cases they will not be so and distorting stereotypes and generators of prejudices will appear. Often, we are presented with expressions seasoned with clichés or sexist adjectives that help to perpetuate the traditional social role attributed to women. Some media treat women as bait to sell a product or service.
Perhaps, part of this happens because through art since time immemorial women have been represented as mothers, goddesses, muses, prostitutes or witches.
Today, it is possible to find on the Internet, radio, cinema, television, and magazines proposals that present women as people with the right to be trained at university level in any career, presidents of governments, presidents of large corporations, and excellent executives.
These media outlets that have done so much to objectify women also helped bring to light a movement that had long been in the shadows, the far-reaching MeToo movement. Focusing on women who have been victims of sexual abuse, assault or exploitation, the movement went viral after actress Alyssa Milano tweeted encouraging women who had been sexually harassed or abused to use the hashtag #MeToo. Subsequently, journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey published an article in The New York Times that unveiled, with testimonies and data, the sexual and power abuses towards women by one of the most powerful producers in the film industry: Harvey Weinstein.
This movement has reached global levels, empowering women, and demonstrating the broad reach of the media in favor of a cause.
Thanks to the spaces won by women, the content and messages that circulate in the media have begun to be transformed. the content and messages that circulate in newspapers, magazines, on the radio, and on the Internet.
The traditional image image of women as mothers, housewives or consumer or object of consumption, is shown together with that of women as economically active people, as women as economically active and professional people.
I do not deny that even in magazines, internet and advertising, women continue to appear as sexual objects, despite the intention to cover the female image with a veneer of modernity and present it as developing professional roles. Women continue to be shown as being concerned with their physical appearance and never with their intellectual aspect.
I think that our formation at home, our values, help us to differentiate between what is perceived of a woman through the media, and what she really is.
A woman is the most sacred thing in the world for me, simply all the people in the world come from her entrails, from her being. If it were not for them we would not exist. They are part of our DNA, which means that all men genetically have something of them. We must respect them and love them beyond any archetype shown in any media.
This is my participation in the initiative Weekend-Engagement writing topics: WEEK 151 Link Here proposed by @galenkp.
Your opinion
Select one of the following topics and write a post of at least 300 words outlining your opinion: Thoughts, concerns, fears, positives or negatives and so on. Use images you took yourself if possible.
The female image portrayed by the media (magazines/social/commercials).
Job uncertainty, unemployment and diminishing job prospects.
The rise of cybercrime and increasing need for cyber-security.
Happy Weekend to all.
The photograph is my own and was taken with my Iphone 4 cell phone.