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A comparison of Christine A. Smith's lecture, Women, Weight and Body Image" and Michele A. Paludi's Sexual Harassment of College Students. " It goes without saying that no matter what a woman is doing in her life, her appearance remains the most important thing for her. But many people consider this fact to be an exaggeration of the patriarchal society, created by men deliberately to supervise women and their behavior.
Christine A. Smiths lecture, Women, Weight, and Body Image, and Michele A. Paludi's lecture, Sexual Harassment of College Students, states that our pop culture helps this opinion to exist and even make it stronger. Music video effects the high importance of beautiful appearance most of all. Christina Aguilera's clip Dirty, issued by David La Chapelle in 2002 is a bright example. Such music video unintentionally because the sense those beautiful women are in the privileged position and the appearance of the woman can influence the attitude of the man towards her.
The singer Christina Aguilera shows the stereotype inaccessible appearance, that almost all the women try to reach. Tight pants, clinging tops, chaps. Cristina is dancing before the men, showing how a woman should behave in order to be not only attractive for the representatives of the positive sex but even to be respected! Supporting the arguments which we try to eliminate, she influences the developing of the strong point that women exist only to satisfy the mens sexual desires. Crawford & Unger wrote that, sexual harassment [... ] includes extreme stereotypes of women, such as the idea that sexual harassment is a form of seduction and that women secretly need / want to be forced into sex (2000, p. 312).
Of course, this is the nature of the men that conjectures them to like sexually open women. But that should be within reasonable limits whereas Christina Aguilera's sexual behavior only encourages men to bother women with sexual solicitations. Moreover, Cristina uses her body to show that only thin woman can be considered to be beautiful and every woman must have a goal to become thinner and thinner even if she is already too thin. Just think about how many women suffer that fixed idea.
In populations where thinness is mandatory, for example, among dancers and models, eating disorders are common Smith wrote at the page 67. Here he also states that eating disorders and negative body image may not be caused by physiological problems but by cultural and social pressures to be thin. And according to Andreas M. Shop Influence of the mass media: one day our world will turn into the place of poor hungry skeletons At the page 65 Smith says that women in Western cultures are bombarded with images of this unrealistically slim, eternally young, ideal woman. Cristina Aguilera serves as a perfect example of these women.
She represents a woman who is the most attractive for men and the ideal which all the women without exception should try to reach. Those women who watch her clips (and there are millions of them) go to all lengths in order to have so long legs and other advantages of the singer. I think that Christina Aguilera should at least think about what the people think personally about her watching her clips, even if she doesnt care how she influence the mentality of the society. It is not a secret that in our society we pay attention to the womens appearance more than to mens. A woman must be beautiful, whereas a man may not be. Women are supposed to make an effort to attract men.
Good looks are more important to men than to women in evaluating a potential date, and especially important in a prospective sexual partner (Crawford & Unger, 2000, p. 56). Watching Christina Aguilera in her clips men create an ideal of woman for them and want all the women to look and dress like her. They dream about unachievable ideal and who knows, if they see Aguilera in real life, they maybe, would become disappointed because her scene image and a real girl are a bit different. The influence of video music has negative consequences both for men and women. In college women, the strongest predictor of dysfunctional views about the importance of physical appearance was the degree to which they accepted stereotypic views about male dominance and female submission (Crawford & Unger, 2000, p. 55).
Dancing before men, Christina ones more proves mens superiority and the fact that women exist only to bring men sexual delight. Smith and Paludi states that showing of the necessity of physical beauty affects the pressure of women, and this effect is not positive. Christina Aguilera's clip Dirty is an example of such male superiority that we have in our society. As a result women become less self-assured; they are loosing their individuality, trying to look like the singer. The word dirty itself is speaking as from the book.
It makes people think such women are dirty but they are the best, so it is nice to be dirty. It sounds absurdly, but some people, especially teenagers really believe that. Girls dreams are not about good education and family, but about long legs, shot skirt and dancing. What should we than expect from them? Nowadays people have very doubtful view on the impact of mass media on our society. They doubt about the real advantage of it.
Some of them even consider it to be harmful for peoples mentality because of its psychological impact. Ann Norman writes in Mass media in modern society: XX century presented us with the miracle TV as a method to develop our body and spirit. It is possible to show anything you like, opportunities practically are not limited. It has great impact on our society and should be used properly. And lets try to turn it into the instrument to improve the life in our society and peoples mentality. Bibliography 1.
Ann Norman: Mass media in modern society, London (2002) 2. Andreas M. Shop: Influence of the mass media, Conference Coimbra September (2003). 4. Lectures on the Psychology of Women, Third Edition Edited by: J. Chrysler, C.
Golden, & P. Role, McGraw Hill (2004) 5. Christine A. Smith's lecture, Women, Weight and Body Image" 6. Michele A. Paludi's Sexual Harassment of College Students"
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