The media is all-powerful.
It’ll tell you what you should be eating, wearing and doing. It’ll tell you what TV show you should be watching, what exercise you should be doing and what side of a court case you should be on.
Almost gone are the days of the serious newscast, and when there is serious news, it’s usually deemed “too depressing” without that celebrity baby update or picture of a squirrel juggling acorns.
So what about women in the media?
The group Miss Representation has posted a video recently about how women have been portrayed in the media for 2013. For every Katniss and Malala Yousafzai, there’s a Joan Rivers or a Rush Limbaugh. There’s a condescending article about how a prominent female senator wears her heels instead of how she wears her intellectual ideas. The onslaught of hate for Hillary Clinton has already begun, and she’s yet to commit to anything.
I saw a Target commercial recently where the woman is buying gifts for herself. What does she indulge in? Shoes. Jewelry. Makeup. A kitchen mixer. And the coup de grâce, a vacuum cleaner.
*Massive, back-of-skull-loss-of-consciousness eye roll*
And of course it’s not just women. The media messages we see tender to ideals of every demographic you can think of. It’s about race, sexual identity, disability, anything. It’s permeating in every bit of our culture.
But that’s ok, right? The media isn’t everything. It isn’t the truth. It isn’t “real life”. So why bother?
People don’t believe everything they see.
Men don’t really think that “adult videos” are how sexual relationships are in real life. That’s silly.
Women don’t think that there’s a prince charming out there and a happily ever after is waiting just for them. That’s ludicrous.
Young girls don’t think they need to lose weight. That’s outrageous. They are perfectly happy ignoring the photo-shopped ads and just playing on the playground.
Adolescent men don’t feel the need to be tough macho men. They’re ok with expressing their feelings.
As the always amazing Lily Allen has recently stated, “If you can’t detect the sarcasm, you’ve misunderstood”.
Happy Holidays.
