A Different Viewpoint...?

The all-to-often realized glass ceiling is
an example of lack of agency for
women in the workplace.

For better or for worse, I am not in a position to speak from personal experience on this issue. I have not been in a situation where my agency was denied because of an atavistic viewpoint. My opportunities and choices have never been roadblocked by naysayers or otherwise, but today there are people out there that make up about half of the world population who are marginalized and taken advantage of simply because… well… they could be? I’m at a loss at this point because beyond the perpetual “money and power” potential that comes from the exploitation of women, I can’t really put a finger on a good reason as to why this whole dichotomy exists simply because someone was born with two X chromosomes. Basically, the rule as it stands today is, if you were born with the double X config, then you better watch out, because no one in a position of power will grant you anything. More likely they will manipulate you into giving up that power, that agency, that you as a human being should posses, and use it to constantly knock you down a couple of pegs to “keep you in your place”.

The mainstream media is a tool of many of those who wish to deny women agency. Look at the advertisements of mainstream media. Forget about simple objectification of women, advertisements and portrayal of women in fictional television, film, and even the news, set women up for almost inevitable difficulty by constantly instilling the idea of perfection and that what you as a woman are is not that. It is for this reason, among others like horrible peer pressure and bullying, that concepts such as the “Thin Commandments” take hold with messages like:
    If you are not thin, you are not attractive,
    Thou shall not eat without feeling guilty,
    Thou shall not eat fattening foods without punishing oneself afterwards,
    What the scale says is the most important thing,
and possibly the worst and most telling of them all,
    Being thin and not eating are true signs of will power and success. (Wykes, 214)
Concepts like these tell girls and women that they are not in control of their own bodies, they are beholden to a standard which is unattainable and frankly, dangerous. Eating disorders are quite prevalent among teenage girls and the mass media is not exactly helping that situation, but rather exacerbate it with damaging advertisements and representing women as mythical objects of beauty.

Aside from these messages being transmitted and ingrained in girl’s and women’s minds either subliminally or through constant bombardment, girls and women are always reminded of their lack of agency when it comes to control over their very bodies. While laws differ depending on location, certain states will go out of their way to ensure that a girl under the age of consent will not be able to have an abortion procedure done by representing the unborn fetus in court and suing the girl, often delaying court proceedings past the term of her pregnancy. Widening the lens, female birth control solutions are often not covered under medical insurance while drugs for "male performance enhancement" are.

A satirical street painting which can sum up quite
a few of the problems brought up about today's media.

Perhaps the most interesting thing, as I see it, is how we live in a world where information and mass media circulates around the world at the speed of light, and yet the most prevalent information parallels relatively ancient ideology which paints women in in ways that are not representative of reality. For all the advancements we have made in the ways of technology, how have we not been able to see things differently than painters during the renaissance era. Our ways of seeing have been compromised and limited by those standards set forth years ago, as Birger says in “Ways of Seeing”: “To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men… A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself… From her earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. (Berger, 46) Simply put, women have been put on display for as long as anyone living in the western world (and beyond) can remember. Because that display can sell products through advertising and make loads of money selling products people, especially those whom you can manipulate and control, and do so in perpetuity, as long as the ideology exists.

What can we take away from all this? Bell Hooks talks about the oppositional gaze being a powerful tool. “By courageously looking we defiantly [declare] ‘Not only will I stare, I want my look to change reality.’” (Hooks, 116) We have to understand what we are seeing. The way people are represented in material which is intended to be educational (ex. advertising) is inhuman and we need to challenge that with our gaze. Our understanding that people are not objects to be controlled for profit is our greatest strength to make better media that can actually educate and inform instead of hurt and discourage.

Works cited -
Berger, John. Ways ofor seeing. London: Penguin,1972.37-64
Hooks, Bell. Black Looks. Boston: South End Press, 1992
Wykes, Maggie. Gunter, Barrie.The Media and Body Image. SAGE Publications, London 2005