Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt: Unmasking Gender Objectification and Body Image

Media Influence and Objectification: Unveiling the Impact on Body Image and Gender

Commercials are an essential and accessible method for corporations to make themselves famous in public. The two current successful ways of advertisement are television and magazines. It is mostly because the majority of the communities favor paying attention to these kinds of technological communication.

An award-winning author, Jean Kilbourne, explains how people are being targeted by the advertisements. In “‘Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt,’ Advertising and Violence,” author Jean Kilbourne explains that advertising methods almost follow the images of vulgarity and objectify people, mainly women.

Another article, “Body-Image Pressure Increasingly Affects Boys,” by Santa Cruz, discusses how these media have affected our view of body image. Moreover, people think of a perfect body as six-packs and muscle. Furthermore, Cruz argues that the idea of the perfect body image has been misguided by advertisements. Throughout the essay, the author has picturized that describe women in negotiating poses. These images are illustrations of how usually we notice women in dehumanizing conditions in commercials and how desensitized we have become. Kilbourne urges us to consider the media more dangerously.

Unmasking Gender Stereotyping and Media Impact: Critiquing Objectification in ‘Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt’

In Jean Kilbourne’s essay, Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt, the author discusses how advertising shows women and men as vulgarized and sexualized. For example, she pointed out how few brands use nudes on the ad covers to sell their products. She argues that men and women are being misrepresented as sex symbols and tools by the mass media. Kilbourne said that pornography is much more dangerous when its praise of rape and violence displays in mass media. Most of the violence in the male is created by these ads because, as they see in mass media, men are shown above everybody, and they pretend to like them in real life.

In Jamie Santa Cruz’s essay, Body Image Pressure Increasingly Affects Boys, the author points out how the concern of weight and eating disorders are increasing in men, but the signs are not the same in men and women. Cruz argues that the mass media plays an important role in men’s physical fitness. Most of the ads only show men in their ads, and even the models are showing more thins. The runway models play major roles in middle and high school kids, and they look up to them. This is the main reason why most boys try to lose weight and gain muscle. However, as a result, they get depressed and change their behaviors.

Challenging Harmful Norms: Rethinking Advertising’s Impact on Gender and Body Image

Kilbourne and Santa Cruz both showed good ideas. I do agree with both of them that advertisement is creating violence against women and men. Most of the commercials display men’s and girls’ nudes on the front pages, such as in magazines and newspapers. It presents wrong advice to young guys regarding women’s right intentions. I also admire how she emphasizes that girls can be judgmental and even ruthless when it comes to another woman’s sexual behavior.

The most critical portion of her article is her expression of women’s negative approach toward sufferers of physical assault. Sometimes we look different ways when girls wear certain kinds of clothes. As Crus said in her article, unrealistic bodies are shown in most of the advertisements. Additionally, women and men are both hurt by commercials and the media. For men, it’s necessary to look bigger and buffer, and for women, it’s being skinnier and thinner. Society must adapt and accept realistic models instead of ones who have an eating disorder or were edited too much. Companies and the media shouldn’t go much further to show these unrealistic bodies, but instead, the mass media need to work on displaying normal bodies in magazines. So that people would stop looking at these unhealthy skinny models and avoid getting eating disorders.

In conclusion, Sex in advertising is mostly pornographic. In fact, it’s due to dehumanizing and objectifying people. Ads should be funny, informational, or several other things, but shouldn’t be sexualized images of men and women. Just by improving our forms of advertising, we can adjust the way the world views and beliefs about males and females and relations.

References

1. Kilbourne, Jean. “‘Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt,’ Advertising and Violence.” 
2. Santa Cruz, Jamie. “Body-Image Pressure Increasingly Affects Boys.”
3. Grogan, Sarah. “Body Image: Understanding Body Dissatisfaction in Men, Women, and Children.”
4. Ferguson, Christopher J. “Media Influences on Body Image and Eating Disorders.”
5. Thompson, J. Kevin, and Linda Smolak. “Body Image, Eating Disorders, and Advertising.”
6. Pope, Harrison G., Katharine A. Phillips, and Roberto Olivardia. “The Adonis Complex: How to Identify, Treat and Prevent Body Obsession in Men and Boys.”

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