Media and Fiction: What are We Being Sold?

Mariko Hirata, OCU 

In Japanese society today, partially imposed roles and biases toward sex have changed over the years, but not all have. Many people still hold onto ideas about how ideal women or men should be and what they should look like. Most forms of mass media reinforce these ideals in images and sounds through advertisements in text and television.

Source: pininterest.com

Advertisers never fail to show us the ideal men, women, girls and boys as well as the roles they assume as husbands, wives, sons, and daughters. People tend to believe that these models who smile on screen are the best representations and real, and so as consumers we try to achieve for ourselves these created images. This is one major reason why young healthy girls undergo cosmetic surgery so as to achieve a more sexy body, which, it turns out, they actually don’t need. It is as if media are brainwashing us.

In fashion magazines, we can see tall thin models, and we sometimes aspire to be like them. There is a famous quotation by supermodel Kate Moss that say, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” So, many women still try to lose their weight by suppressing their appetites and excessively dieting. Interestingly, top fashion models are also becoming thinner and thinner.

Conversely, through media, we can see that men are required to be tough, strong, cool, and macho. In some movies, we might see a father teach his son how to play sports or how to fight with someone. If the son fails or performs poorly, he might be called a “wimp.”

These are planted gender biases, which media continue to still reinforce. One way to support the bias is through digital imaging. After the filming or photographing is finished, editors can modify body lines by making them thinner or thicker, and removing scars and wrinkles by using Photoshop. This means that the ideal model in a magazine doesn't really exist; the “ideal” is really just a creation of some editors’ imagination. Nonetheless, many people tend to think that women should conform to these imagined ideals.

From the 1940s to today, media have also reinforced the roles of women in the home. Most of the household cleaning and kitchen work seen in advertisements during these times (and till today) has featured women. The message is that housework is the primary job of the wife, or mother. The products pitched in the advertisements are appealing to women because they are apparently easy to use. And, most people tend to agree with the idea that ease of work is good and that women are the ones who should do it.

Many parents seem to help maintain the current state as well. For example, mothers often remind their daughters to practice their skills in cooking, cleaning, and doing the laundry. Elderly people, especially, think this way and keep females in leading strings in preparation for marriage. One of my friends wanted to go on to university after high school, but her grandmother expressed a vehement opposition toward her going on to high learning. She said, “You are a woman and what you have to do is household tasks only. You don’t need to get higher education.”

Source: rachellegardner.com

The grandmother still holds onto this unshakable belief that the home and all of the work it requires is to be a major part of the woman’s role in life. If we look at the present economy, though, it is obvious that this grandmother’s ideas are out-dated. I believe that it’s difficult (if not impossible) for women to do every household task in this present economy, especially when she must also work outside the home.

Because of the social advancement of women, they can (and sometimes must) work in the same ways as men do, so the division of household labor has become a normal thing for us today. People should shift their consciousness about these gender roles and biases and see advertising for what it is: a fiction.