My view

We’ve all witnessed sexism in various shapes and forms may it be in in our lives on a daily or on the media. As far as I’m concerned, for as long as I remember there’s always been gender inequality and of course I barely thought of it when I was young. But as I grew up my friends started to diversify so I had more female friends and I started consuming much more media content. Sexism within the media has remained an issue for so long because most males are numb to it from a young age. Most movies usually portray most male actors (which are usually the main characters as well) as strong and powerful beings while their female counter-parts are either there for sexual purposes or simply as support roles. This makes the male viewers feel like they are placed on pedestal above females and that stops them from advocating for equality. Of course this not only in the cinema industry but in almost all aspects of media. The most prominent positions in the media are almost always reserved to men. A recent study conducted in 2017 stated that women are twice more likely to be shown naked or underdressed in adverts, 1 in 10 women are pictured in sexually revealing clothing (which is six times more than their male counter-parts). According to Social Change initiative at the University of Southern California of the 4,370 ‘speaking or named characters’ in last year’s 100 highest grossing US films, only 31.4 percent were women. (Rosseinsky, 2018) Female TV presenters also seem to be sat on the right side of the camera which seem inoffensive at first but since we all read from left to right we automatically focus on the left side of the screen. Camera left is mostly the dominant side. All throughout media content we can see clear unreasonable physical standard set on women. These standards hinder the progress of women at these particular positions, they might get laid off for being considered overweight, not young enough or plainly not attractive enough for the camera, which like I mentioned in a previous post is absolutely ridiculous. But by far the most harmful type of sexism displayed in the media has to be objectification. Far too often have we seen women put in ad, movie or show purely because of her body. Purely in the aim to please male viewers. This has mainly been the bread and butter of music videos in the last decade or so. Especially in the hip-hop genre, this objectification has been so overexposed that at this point most viewers have become numb to it regardless of their genders. It’s almost become a norm. On the other end of the spectrum we have advertisement for home supplies that always feature a male and female actor and usually put the female in a subordinate position. Almost in this ‘house-wife position’ that doesn’t even really exist anymore in this day and age. Women can be breadwinners just as much as men.

New Study Uncovers The Shocking Sexism Of TV And Film Adverts