This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at American chapter.
When we think of sexism in entertainment, a million different things come to mind.
From objectification through sexualized images of men and women in everything from horror films to cigarette advertisements, to reinforcing the roles of men and women in the household, relationships, the workplace – you name it – in the television shows and movies that we watch every day, sexism is unavoidable.
But sexism isn’t just in our visual media. It’s not just in ficitious depictions of American families or used as exploitation to get someone to buy a car. It’s in our entertainment and our news. It’s found subtly in places that have the potential to expel sexism, but instead reinforce the very ideals that are at the heart of gender inequality.
When Chelsea Clinton gave birth to her baby, Time Magazine actually dedicated an entire article of “The Pros and Cons of ‘President Grandma’,” commenting on how having a grandchild would affect Hillary Clinton’s presidency if elected. This is presented as a news piece. Incidentally, grandparenthood seemed to never have been commented on in the past for how it would affect other male potential presidential candidates. But please just let it sink in that our society tells us that a woman’s supposed place in the household is so important to her life and her career that it makes the news and is apparently a topic for debate and discussion yet we hardly, if ever, see the same for influential men.
Magazines act as both a form of entertainment and journalism. You can pick up a woman’s magazine and find everything from how to make your morning routine faster and more effective, to which shoes are in for the upcoming season, to op-eds on important social and political issues that affect you as an individual.
Because of this, a magazine has the potential to be extremely influential. When someone reads a magazine, they are gaining an understanding of society. Based on what kind of articles a magazine covers, we can see what this magazine’s audience values, and further what society as a whole values.
But further, when a young woman reads a woman’s magazine, she is learning where she fits in relation to the rest of society. She is being socialized through reading what this magazine promotes and deems important – what kind of attitude she should have in the workplace, what kind etiquette she should have on a first date, what kind of goals she should have, and who she should be as a woman in today’s world.
Yet today, even with a rise in feminist understanding and a push towards social change for gender issues to be brought to light, woman’s magazines still tend to subtly promote the very sexism they have the potential to expel.
How often have you seen print or online magazines cover topics such as “How to Get a Guy to Like You” or “Ways to Show You Are Interested in Him Without Being Too Clingy”?
Now, is wanting a guy to like you or not wanting to annoy your boyfriend a bad thing? Certainly not. But these articles reinforce the idea that issues that women face today revolve around her not being good enough for a man – that women exist for men and they should aim to be the best woman for that role as possible.
There’s a really big difference between an article that’s titled “How to Get a Guy to Like You” and “10 Ways to Be a Killer Flirt.” The first gives men all the power. The first tells women that a man has the final say in a relationship and that a woman’s goal is do her best to make him like her. If she can get him to like her, she has nothing to worry about because it’s assumed that she’s the one head-over-heels.
The second, on the other hand, doesn’t tell a woman that working to get a guy to like her is the best thing that she can achieve today. Instead, it completely changes the goal of the article and levels the playing field. It gives women more power than it would if the goal were just to get a guy to like her.
Both of these articles could be the same exact content and intended for the same exact audience, but the message just in the slight change of the title makes a huge difference in shaping the way that young women see themselves.
Unfortunately, we are part of the problem. Magazines want to get website traffic, and unfortunately we know as writers, editors, and publishers that these kinds of articles get the traffic that we want. These kinds of articles appeal to our readers because it gives them the information that society has taught them to need.
And even worse, we as readers would give these articles traffic, too.
Instead, we should drastically change the way that women see themselves. Rather than reinforcing the very sexist ideas that society has ingrained us to understand and believe, we can fight against it and construct entertaining and useful pieces that give readers what they want while also showing women a different side of where they belong in society.
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