Representation of our women
How are women represented today? With media being such a large portion of how we communicate in today's world, anybody can say anything they want, at any time. This allows for so many people to give their opinions that weren’t asked for. Women are quite often the scripted in dehumanizing ways, leading to more anger and social movements. Either in a predatory or a prey like fashion. "Predator metaphors label women as aggressive and are often used to describe powerful women. Wild animals are independent, outside of human control, and dangerous. Predator metaphor suggest that the power enjoyed by these women's is a legitimate and that higher social status should be retained by men who are rational and intelligent" (Tipler, C and Ruscher, R, PG 2, 2017). The fact that women are being depicted in such a manner, is downright degrading.
We know and see it every single day, even though they try to tell us longer happening in our society and the government has conformed to women’s needs. It continues every single day, and it will continue to happen until again for women. “The emphasis on youth in many ‘women-are-prey’ metaphors enhance the perception of docility (Hines, 1999). ‘Chicks’, ‘kittens’, and ‘fillies’ are meek and sweet. Importantly, prey do not challenge the authority of humans. They are appropriately dominated by their masters and submissive to their will. Thus, ‘women-as-predator’ and ‘women-as-prey’ offer distinct affordances: ‘women-as-predator’ are dangerous beasts from which control must be wrested and ‘women-as-prey’ are submissive creatures who can be captured and dominated” (Tipler, C and Ruscher, R, PG 2, 2017). So, women either way are being represented as either “too much” and/or in such a way that we can be over-powered, and we SHOULD be overpowered by men.
Even though we are, again, supposed to be equal and supposed to have equal rights, do we? Hostile sexism is still a very lively state of mind for some. “Hostile sexism emphasizes men’s power and status over women, reflects desires to forcibly maintain women in comparatively low status positions, and depicts high status women as leveraging their sexuality to gain dominance over men.” (Tipler, C and Ruscher, R, PG 3, 2017) Though, there are a majority of those who believe women should be represented this way, it stands to show that there is still a vast number of humans who believe women have their role and should stay in it. We are told we have rights and everything that we do, but we don't. Women are still treated less than men, women are treated as delicate flowers or crazy, women are treated as we've always been treated, as just women.
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References:
Tipler, C. N., & Ruscher, J. B. (2017). Dehumanizing representations of women: The shaping of hostile sexist attitudes through animalistic metaphors. Journal of Gender Studies, 28(1), 109-118. doi:10.1080/09589236.2017.1411790
