Does the way women dress influence the way men view them? This has been a long debated question, some groups and protesters such as 'SlutWalk' have come about to raise awareness to the idea that just because a women dresses provocatively does not mean she is at fault if a man accost her. While reading the chapter on female sexuality I began to think about this topic. I decided to do a little bit of research and was surprised when I came across a study done by Princeton University. According to this study men view women in bathing suits as objects instead of actual people. The study stated that "Men tend to associate bikini-clad women with first-person action verbs such as I "push," "handle" and "grab"... They associated fully clothed women with the third-person forms, indicating these women were perceived as in control of their own actions."The study also mentioned that this maybe a subconscious though and that men didn't look at women in this light intentionally. While reading this it brought to mind the reading from Chapter 3 entitled Unraveling Hardwiring, as you may recall this article was about how our minds are programed from society and why we all think the way that we do. It's like our brains are computers and certain images connect with certain ideas. Now I'm not saying that it is any way okay for men to view women in bathing suits as objects rather than women but I do believe that our culture with the advertisements we show on T.V have a huge impact on the males perspective on how to treat a woman. Below I have included the link to the article with the full study explained and a clip from youtube which shows the objectification of women in commercials. I believe in order to change the way that men see and treat women we should change the way that women are portrayed in advertising and on television shows. If we start here I believe that we could change the way that our cultures brains are hardwired and possibly improve how women view themselves in the process.
Women Objectified
I found your blog post very interesting and the question it raises—can society hardwire itself into our perceptions? That’s a scary thought if yes, because let’s face it, we all want to believe that we’re in control of our thoughts and that we get to decide what is morally correct for ourselves. But when such media surrounds you everyday and you are not actively thinking about the message it is carrying or what the model in the picture had to go through to look that perfect, letting these gender stereotypes becomes disturbingly normal. That is absolutely terrifying to me.
ReplyDeleteIn the beginning of this blog it was mentioned that gender violence's (an assault based someone trying to gain power over another gender) excuse is often tied to the way a woman dresses. I would like to tap on that a little bit. There are stories about rape in which a rapist is let off because "her shirt was too low" or "her jeans were too tight." It is very painful to hear these things. As shown in our readings, there are all sorts of elements such as porn that make men think they can do these things based on the way a woman dresses. So, not only are we told by the media that this is what is attractive, but when we dress this way some men can assault us because of the way we dress. It is all part of that cycle of oppression. It seems to me lately that it all leads back to media and all the stuff they put out there that are causing these vicious things to happen. It is sooooo frustrating.
ReplyDelete-Rachael Belcher