A Look Into The Sexualization of Women

“More than 16 percent of women are sexually assaulted while in college” according to The Hunting Ground, a documentary about college rape. This percentage is disturbingly high. Unfortunately, American society is not only unhelpful in exterminating the acute problem of women being sexualized, but also perpetuates the prevalence of objectifying women. Since women are being objectified, both their assertiveness and confidence are being eroded. As a result, women are silenced about being sexualized, allowing rapists and rape culture to prevail. Women are being objectified at the root of societal dealings: the media, the public, and the schools.

Women are held to excruciatingly strict beauty standards in the media. In the film Miss Representation, author Jean Kilbourne states that “you never see the photograph of a woman considered beautiful that hasn’t been digitally altered to make her absolutely, inhumanly perfect . . . not surprisingly, young men who are shown lots of photographs of supermodels then judge real women much more harshly.” Whether one realizes it or not, everytime a person steps into a store or drives past a billboard, they are desensitized to the glamorized and overly sexualized women who are being advertised. In addition, beauty agents are not the only people who judge women. In fact, women can be some of the cruelest judges of other women. Cindy Bosley, a poet and teacher, gives some insight on how harshly women are judged today when she says “an extra point for being tan… more points for breasts, more points for unpainted nails, fewer points for big noses, [and] fewer points for skinny lips…” in her essay “How I Lost the Junior Miss Pageant.” The standards set for women to be considered attractive are becoming increasingly difficult to satisfy.

Women are expected to live up to the unrealistic beauty standards, and are not only becoming objectified by men, but are starting to self-objectify. Some women become obsessed with their looks to the point of developing eating disorders. Moreover, women who do not fit the supermodel build are body-shamed. Overweight people are often depicted as “sorrowful, empty losers with no friends and no self-esteem” in the media, according to Ann Marie Paulin in her essay “Cruelty, Civility, and Other Weighty Matters.” The depiction of overweight females in the media is extremely derogatory. As a result, many thin people assume losing weight should be as easy for everyone to maintain as it is for them. Although, in some cases that may be true, many people have a very hard time maintaining what is considered an attractive body weight since “sugary or fatty foods are often available in grab and go packages that are so much easier to take to work or eat in the car…” (Paulin). Consequently, “girls get the message from very early that what’s most important is how they look, that their value, their worth, depends on that. And boys get the message that this is what’s important about girls” (Miss Representation). Since both women and men are sexualizing and objectifying women, it is no wonder that there is so much rape.

Rape is an incredibly heinous crime that unfortunately is all too common, especially on college campuses. Females are usually the victims of sexual assault, but a victim requires a perpetrator. In Miss Representation, author Jennifer L. Pozner states the following:

The most popular scripted TV genre is procedural crime dramas which fetishize and glamorize rape, incest, and torture of women and children. And in reality TV, women are portrayed as stupid, bitchy, pathetic gold diggers who can never be happy without being passively chosen by any man who’ll have them.

This passiveness that is forced on women is anything but beneficial to preventing rape. In The Hunting Ground, a documentary about college rape, it is declared that “80 percent of women sexually assaulted on campus do not report.” The University of California Berkeley alone had 78 reports of sexual assault from 2008–2013, yet only three expulsions (The Hunting Ground). America is basically telling young men that it is okay to rape and objectify women. The oversexualization of females contributes greatly to the rape culture being so glorified and present in our culture. It needs to stop.

. Our country may seem hopeless, yet this kind of negative thinking is exactly what helps prolong the problem. Rape is not only an issue for women, but also for men. Men must be taught by both women and other men to not rape and sexualize women. Similarly, women must be encouraged and educated that they do not need to achieve a higher standard of beauty, or repress their strong voices because of something society expects. Although America still has a long way to go, this venture is not impossible. Be strong, courageous, and unyielding.

Citations

Bosley, Cindy. How I Lost the Junior Miss Pageant. 4th ed., Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, Boston, Massachusetts , 2014, pp. 31 — 33, How I Lost the Junior Miss Pageant.

Paulin, Ann Marie. Cruelty, Civility, and Other Weighty Matters. 4th ed., Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, Boston, Massachusetts , 2014, pp. 202 — 206, Cruelty, Civility, and Other Weighty Matters.

Pozner, Jennifer, director. Miss Representation, 20 Jan. 2011, http://therepresentationproject.org/film/miss-representation/.

Ziering, Amy, director. The Hunting Ground. 27 Feb. 2015, http://thehuntinggroundfilm.com/.