Representations of Gender: Objectification and stereotyping

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3.3 Representations of Gender :
Objecti
fi
cation and Stereotyping

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• In
fl
uence of media projection and representations
• Books, radio, television, newspaper, internet …
• What media portrays gets assimilated into the minds of the
audience and in
fl
uences them
• The degree of pervasiveness
• Women as the potential victims of media’s in
fl
uence over society
• Portrayal as sexual
fi
gures in popular culture; Models of femininity;
as a standard for the ideal female image that women are compared
to by themselves or others; in
fl
uence on young girls who are
developing their sense of self
• Exposure to sexualised female ideals - lower self-esteem, negative
mood and depressive symptoms

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• Objecti
fi
cation - representation of women in media as an object rather than
as a whole human entity
• TV serials, ads, movies, magazines etc
• Feminists criticises - objecti
fi
cation of women involves the act of disregarding
the personal and intellectual abilities and capabilities of a female and
reducing a woman’s worth or role in society to that of an instrument for the
sexual pleasure that she can produce in the mind of another
• Media represents women as passive, vulnerable and easily overpowered
situations
• Images portrays - focus only on a part of the body, hair, lips, a neck or a
headless torso that constitutes objecti
fi
cation and introduces the concept of
fetishisation - the intention is to reduce women to disembodied parts of their
anatomy
• Commercialisation and its impact - women as consumers - capitalism and
colourism

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• https://
www.theguardian.com/
media/2016/apr/28/asa-
probe-gender-stereotyping-
women-adverts
• The beach body ad - body
shaming and objecti
fi
cation

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Reproduction of Gender
stereotypes
• Media as the channels of cultural communication and the moulders and perpetrators of social images
• Malayalam TV Serials - women are either vamps or needy and deprived
• Hegemonic masculinity and emphasised femininity
• Mother-in-law Vs Daughter-in-law; good ideal woman who’s chaste, long suffering and submissive
and is inclined to make sacri
fi
ces, unjustly treated and brutally victimised; bad woman as
westernised, blond-haired, individualistic and sexually aggressive, ready to lead men into ruin
• Advertisement - stereotypical ways, Men as autonomous (ads of vehicles, business products, job
websites) ; women with saree, housewives and mothers (domestic products, cooking in the kitchen,
washing bucketful of clothes, cooking for family
• Women as sex objects, exposing their bodies
• Fair complexion, tall, slim and beautiful looking women are the ideal ones and dark complexion is
propagated as a major hindrance for self development even marriage
• Manipulating minds of young

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• Sexual objecti
fi
cation theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) postulates that
many women are sexually objecti
fi
ed and treated as an object to be valued for
its use by others.
• Sexual objecti
fi
cation occurs when a woman’s body or body parts are singled
out and separated from her as a person and she is viewed primarily as a
physical object of male sexual desire
• Women to varying degrees internalise this outsider view and begin to self-
objectify by treating themselves as an object to be looked at and evaluated on
the basis of appearance.
• Self-objecti
fi
cation manifests in a greater emphasis placed on one’s
appearance attributes (rather than competence-based attributes) and in how
frequently a woman watches her appearance and experiences her body
according to how it looks
Sexual Objecti
fi
cation Theory

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• Schur (1984) uses Labelling Theory to demonstrate
how the devalued and stigmatised master status of
femaleness results in the selective perception of
women based on stereotypes, and in their
objecti
fi
cation as things rather than persons.
• In turn, objecti
fi
cation allows others to treat women in
degrading and exploitative ways that produce self-
ful
fi
lling prophecies by which women come to de
fi
ne
themselves as inferior and to suffer from low self-
esteem, in-group hostility, and identi
fi
cation with their
male oppressors

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Male Gaze
• British feminist
fi
lm theorist Laura Mulvey described
the concept of the "male gaze" in her 1973 essay
"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," which was
published in 1975 in the
fi
lm theory magazine “Screen”
• The way that mainstream media objecti
fi
es women,
showing the female body through a heterosexual male
lens as a passive non-actor secondary to the active
male characters
• The effect - sexist, patriarchal and misogynistic

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References
• Barbara J. Risman, Carissa M. Froyum, William J. Scarborough (2018) Handbook of the
Sociology of Gender-Springer International Publishing (pg 101)
• Janet Saltzman Chafetz (2006) - Handbook of the Sociology of Gender (Handbooks of
Sociology and Social Research)
• Michie, Helena. (1989). The Flesh Made Word : Female Figures and Women’s Bodies,
OUP : New York. (Ch.5)
• Frost, Liz. (2001), Young Women and the Body : A Feminist Sociology. Palgrave
Macmillan : UK
• Szymanski, D. M., Mof
fi
tt, L. B., & Carr, E. R. (2010). Sexual objecti
fi
cation of women:
Advances to theory and research. The Counseling Psychologist, 39(1), 6–38. https://
doi.org/10.1177/0011000010378402
• Berberick, N. Stephanie, The Objecti
fi
cation of Women in Mass Media : Female Self-
Image in Misogynist Culture, The New York Sociologist, Vol.5, 2010.
• Blood, K. Sylvia. (2005). Body Work : The Social Construction of Women’s Body Image,
Routledge : London.

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Writing Activity
• Explain objecti
fi
cation and stereotyping of gender in
media