how the media views women.

How have media representations of women and women’s body/beauty? Have the changes been empowering to women? Why or why not?

Media objectives the woman’s body a lot more then it empowers it. In TV and movies women are often portrayed as sexual objects. It seems to me that a majority of TV and movies tend to star men and have women play the wife, assistant, secretary, or other second-hand characters. For example, on the show The Office the leading women are either a secretary, a girlfriend or a lower-level employee. The manager and assistant manager are both males, and the show is largely based upon their office in Scranton. Within the company that they all work for there is one higher up female manager, but her power is belittled when she dates Michael, the manager from Scranton. Shows like this are all over TV and because they are funny and entertaining the representation of women is ignored.
There are TV shows like Sex and the City which star women and their high profile lives. Shows like this help to empower women, but shows like Desperate Housewives which also star a cast of women tend to do the opposite. Desperate Housewives objectifies women by putting them in a subordinate role and creating a soap opera about sex, infidelity, and good looks. I think one of the only reasons the show is successful is because of how beautiful the leading ladies are. Their beauty entices both men and women to watch the show. The producers of Desperate Housewives realize this and use the star’s bodies as sexual objects to sell the show. This is not empowering to women. It also can create body image issues with the viewers. The leading ladies of the show are all very thin, beautiful, and not the public norm. Women watching the show may feel like they are inadequate judging by the cast. It creates a false sense of what a woman should look like.
Media objectifies the women’s body often through its various outlets. I think in our lifetime there have been more advances to fight objectifying women’s bodies and creating these extreme ideals, but I don’t think that we are there yet. Hopefully we will be in our future.