Media's Impact on the Image of Women

I recently read an article which was about the study that media representations of women have become more “pornified.” A new study from University at Buffalo researchers tends to confirm that, over the last few decades, the popular-media portrayal of women has become increasingly sexualized. The study used Rolling Stone covers from 1967 to 2009 as fodder with which to measure changes in media representations of men and women. Researcher Erin Hutton, a sociology professor, said they choose Rolling Stone “because it is a well-established, pop-culture outlet” that “offers a useful window into how women and men are portrayed generally in pop culture.” The study authors devised a “scale of sexualization” to measure degrees of sexualization. Points were awarded based on how intensely sexualized a given image was. Comparing Rolling Stone covers by decade, researchers found that in the 1960s, eleven percent of men were sexualized compared to forty-four percent of women. And in the 2000s, seventeen percent of men were sexualized, compared to a whopping eighty-three percent of women. Among all the sexualized images, a mere two percent of men were hypersexualized, contrasted with a revealing sixty-one percent of women.

From the article, I realized that it is clear that as the pop culture develops, popular media outlets such as Rolling Stone are not depicting women as sexy musicians or actors; rather, they are depicting women musicians and actors as ready and available for sex. Reactions of men and women who see those magazines can differ, but even girls think women depicted in those pop media outlets look too cheap. I remember a conversation between me and my friend last time when we were just skimming through some magazines, we talked about how they do not look gorgeous or sexy but just “cheap.” This becomes increasingly problematic because it indicates a decisive narrowing of media representations of women, not just the portrayed musicians or actresses, but women in general.