“Docile Body”
The media is the particular greatest influential tool at our disposal and it has the power to effect social adjustment, educate, and regulate the governmental system and determinations that shape our lives. It is no secret that women in media are misrepresented. From photo-shoot to over sexuallization, to objectifying the woman body, women are represented in the disrespectful and in repressive manner. “Sexuality is very much a social construction and, thus, a product of a particular sociology-cultural environment,” said Hatton. “What we deem to be appropriate to “wear on the street” is likely not the same in other countries, including those in which women are expected to be fully covered and those in which women are not.”Most media in the society, especially in the Western society, is ruled and created by men. This equalization of power gets shown in the way women are represented in the media from movies, to commercial, to magazine, even the news.
Interaction with these images is avoidable. They surround women in everyday life. Sometime even from the moment they wake up or step out of the house. The effect the media has is large and can be seen in the way women perceive their body and real “perfection.”
Women are so in-doctrinated by the media that like Foucault explained they become their own surveillance camera. Imposing of each other the norms created and the socially constructed perception of “Beauty”. The effect on media can have a women self-esteem and the perception of their own beauty in most case is deleterious.
Foucault’s theory of docile bodies explains how bodies can be disciplined through surveillance. He states in prison how the inmate behave because they are in constant surveillance of each other. After the prison guard has set the ruled for behavior, it is the prisoners themselves who control each other’s behaviors. This can be compared to women and the media. The media and men are the prison guard and women themselves are each other’s prisoners. Even when the prison is absent women will abide by societal norms through the pressure of each other.
“The Confidence Gap”
- FOX News Crops, CEO: Rupert Murdoch, Board: 1 of 16 are women
- The Walt Disney Company , CEO:Robert Lger , Board: 4 of 13 are women
- General Electric (NBC), CEO: Jeffrey T. Immelt , Board :4 of 17 are women
- Viacom (MTV), CEO: Phillip Dauman, Board: 2 of 11 are women
According to Miss Representation. Dir. Jennifer Siebel Newsom and Kimberlee Acquaor. Girls’ Club Entertainment, 2011, the documentary stated that women own only 5.8% of television stations and 6% of radio stations. Women hold only 3% of clout positions in telecommunications, entertainment, publishing and advertising, which mean that most of everything you know about yourself and about your country and about your comes from males perceptive. As you goes up the range in media, fewer and fewer women people of color existed every rung of the ladder. “The media has always been overwhelmingly in the hands of man,” said Barbara J. Berg, PhD.
Another example of “docile body” is from the novel called “The Handmaid tale” by Margret Atwood. In this novel is talked about how women are not treated as equals as men and how docile their bodies becomes. As a matter of fact, they are treated to be vessels for the reveling of children. They are given little to no respect from the men in Republic of Gilead. The women have no privacy, freedom of speech, or any other natural god given right for the right for that matter. The women also learned to hate each other and envy the job of other women. For example, the handmaid as seen as “whores” and the wives are be envious of for having comfortable life. In this novel, the women are shown to be controlled by the mean and underneath the men in the republic of Gilead. It does not matter what class that a woman is, she have to be submissive and appease the men in their country.
“we cannot all be succeed when half of us are held back”
— Malala Yousafzai
