Media Messages
"It's kind of a double-edged sword, isn't it? If you say you haven't, you're a prude.
If you say you have, you're a slut. It's a trap. You want to, but you can't. And
when you did, you wish you hadn't."
- The Breakfast Club
If you say you have, you're a slut. It's a trap. You want to, but you can't. And
when you did, you wish you hadn't."
- The Breakfast Club
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Mass media powerfully influences our perceptions of beauty, our attitudes toward others, and our own self-image.Media in the form of advertising, television, movies, music, and literature sends massively conflicting messages to boys and girls. While women are celebrated for dressing like “sluts” they are shamed for doing it; we are shown that “girls are defined by their sexual desirability, but must remain sexually inexperienced”. (Jarvis, TEDX Toronto 2012 Talk) Women gain power through being desired by men and envied by other women. |
Girls and women are pulled in multiple directions, they must excel in school and their jobs, be loving and creative mothers, obsess about their faces, weight, breast size, clothing, and please their partners by acting like porn stars in the bedroom. But what is the payoff? Women are doomed to failure as expectations for their behaviour become more demanding and incompatable with one another...be effortlessly beautiful, excel in both career and childrearing, be the virgin and the whore. |
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