Inequality of Females in Entertainment
As mentioned many times before, this world clearly remains primarily a male dominated universe. The fight has been going on for a while now, yet the fight is barely beginning. For those who are looking for facts about females in the work place, specifically the media industry, I would highly recommend reading Inclusion or Invisibility?, a report recently done by the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism that came out in February of 2016. It’s a recent study that reveals the latest statistics with female and male diversity in the entertainment industry which this post will be focusing on.
One of the assessments within the report examines the sexualization of characters on screen. As stated in the study, “females were more likely than males to be shown in sexy attire (Females=34.3% vs. Males=7.6%), with some nudity (Females=33.4% vs. Males=10.8%) and physically attractive (Females=11.6% vs. Males=3.5%)” (Smith, Choueiti, Pieper, 2016, pg. 2). These numbers reveal a massive gap that needs to be bridged and opened my eyes as to how realistically outrageous the inequality is. It goes onto to say that “female characters were more likely to be shown scantily clad and partially naked in broadcast, cable, and streaming content than female characters in films” (Smith, Choueiti, Pieper, 2016, pg. 2).
A great example is the well-known premium cable series that is Game of Thrones that premiers on HBO. Reading an outside article that was published January of 2016 says the reason is because “’white men produce the shows’” according to HBO President of Progamming, Michael Lombardo (Carbone, 2016). It discusses how the show reveals “a lot of the ladies at Littlefinger’s brothel, but when it comes to male nudity, they gave us … Hodor. Plus, both Cersei and the High Septon had naked walks of shame, but the High Septon covered his privated parts and we saw all of Cersei” (Carbone, 2016).
I watched an episode with a couple friends this past weekend and asked why do they think females are shown nude way more than men, and my male friend responded “because no one wants to see a man’s penis. They’d rather see women’s parts which are more flattering than a man’s.” Of course, it could have been his stereotypical male mindset speaking, but part of me might agree, just a tiny bit. However, these numbers are staggering and completely outrageous in such an industry. As mentioned in the article, “theory suggests and research supports that exposure to objectifying content may contribute to and/or reinforce negative effects such as self objectification, body shame, and/or appearance anxiety among some female viewers. The results also suggest that with a higher prevalence of females on screen a higher incidence of sexulization follows” (Smith, Choueiti, Pieper, 2016, pg. 3). If women continued to be portrayed as objects on screen, than women will continue to be treated as so in reality.
Reference
Carbone, Gina. (7 January 2016). HBO Boss on Why There’s More Female Nudity vs. Male: ‘White Men Produce the Shows’. movie fone.
Smith, Stacy L., Choueiti, Marc, Pieper, Katherine. (22 February 2016). Inclusion or Invisibility? Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity in Entertainment. USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.