If you order your custom term paper from our custom writing service you will receive a perfectly written assignment on Blah. What we need from you is to provide us with your detailed paper instructions for our experienced writers to follow all of your specific writing requirements. Specify your order details, state the exact number of pages required and our custom writing professionals will deliver the best quality Blah paper right on time.
Out staff of freelance writers includes over 120 experts proficient in Blah, therefore you can rest assured that your assignment will be handled by only top rated specialists. Order your Blah paper at affordable prices !
Rebecca Boyd
ENGL 105 Janice Robertson
Paper #---Analytical Paper (Portfolio Draft)
Women Portrayed In Music Videos
The television entertainment industry has grown dramatically in the past decade especially the music video industry. In the past, there have been music videos for select songs, but now there are complete channels dedicated solely to showing music videos. With many young female entertainers currently at the top of the charts, many of the music video producers have taken the opportunity to depict women in a negative and inferior light. Their bodies have been depicted on the screen as the ideal build even though most are quite skinny compared to the “average” female their age. This has led to a whole host of gender prejudices, confusions regarding sexuality, dissatisfaction with the body, and eating disorders especially among teenage girls.
Current music videos depict women as objects by focusing on some individual parts of the body instead of the whole. In Christina Aguilera’s new video, for example, the cameras often show a few frames of solely her stomach. By “taking apart” the girls’ bodies, viewers get the impression that the entertainers are like robots with replaceable parts. This encourages viewers to see the females as objects rather than people. I have listened to guys across the hall watch music videos and say what body parts they want to take from different women and reassemble to make the perfect woman.
Their conversation while watching MTV one night went like this “Well if you take Christina’s stomach, Britney’s boobs, and Maria’s @$$ -- no wait, she’s getting heavier � Christina’s @$$, man now there’s hot for you.” The girls in the room (who were all between the ages of eighteen and twenty) just laughed and shook their heads. They did not agree, but they also did not stand up and make a big deal of it. They just shook it off as “guys will be guys.” Later in the semester, I was in the same room with basically the same group of people watching MTV. The guys made comments as usual about the female entertainers. Then 8 Degrees came on. Interestingly enough, the girls quietly watched as they had when the females were performing while the guys encouraged them to drool over the entertainers in a mocking fashion. “Becca, look at those abs! [girly voice] Nick is, like, so hot. You want him don’t you? Admit it. You need some loving. You haven’t had a guy in a while.” They were obviously joking around, but the undertone that girls need men for physical/sexual attention was still very prevalent. The girls (myself included) just continued to laugh it off, though, rather than deal with the ridicule of being “all defensive” or just plain “obnoxious” about it. The male music videos depict girls hanging off them to get even one piece of attention or just to serve the males.
Although women feel that music videos degrade their gender, they watch them anyway because they like the songs or just want to watch music videos. Males, however, often blatantly refuse to watch “boy bands” such as the Backstreet Boys and 8 Degrees and call them “sissies” “pretty boys” and “pansies”. When they do see the male entertainers, the males often have degrading comments about the bands such as “They have no talent. What a bunch of fags.” Because many males strongly prefer to see females on the screen, and most females will watch either gender, the television stations show many more women’s music videos than men’s to keep their ratings at a maximum. Men will watch music videos solely to admire the girls’ bodies while women watch to see the dancing and hear the music. Men take offense to being shown as sex symbols while women tolerate it, and many do not even think twice about it. Some of this might be the result of videos and society making them feel like they have no right to protest. Instead they starve themselves to make their bodies look like the “sexy” girls on television.
In a recent Seventeen Magazine article there was an article describing the workout regiment followed by Christina Aguilera, Britney Speares for abs and thighs, and Maria Carey for full body toning. It also had diet tips such as eating vegetables, fruits, salads with no dressing, and no fat snacks. These foods are fine as long as they are supplements, but the article made it sound as though these foods are all that can be eaten in order to lose weight and look like Christina, Britney, or Maria. Seventeen’s target readers are high school girls who. Girls this age tend to be more self-conscious of their bodies than any other age group male or female. The article made the super-slimness of the featured entertainers seem normal and even portrayed them as the templates for how a girl’s body should look.
In women’s music videos, there is a tremendous emphasis on the body and staying “in shape” according to the entertainment industry’s definition. By representing super-skinny girls as desirable, networks create an artificial standard of the ideal, healthy body. Females singers/entertainers spend more time working out than most females have time to. They have luxuries such as personal trainers and to dieticians help them attain their % body fat slimness. Entertainers have a lot of “down time” between performances when many choose to work out to combat boredom. Also, many stars have surgeries to turn their bodies into the perfect dimensions. These surgeries include breast implants, liposuction, collagen injections, and face lifts. They also have the best make up artists to correct any impurities in their face and the skin over their body. Sadly, girls often compare their physical beauty to those on television and try to imitate the stars they see, however unhealthy that may be. Many people blame the rising rate of eating disorders among teens on this. Girls feel they have to look like the females on TV so they resort to bulimia and anorexic behaviors to attain the rock hard, bony bodies they see on television.
Unfortunately, the female entertainers are often locked into doing whatever the producers want for their music videos after signing a contract so even if they do not like being rendered as an object of flesh for men to gawk at, they have no choice. One interview on MTV featured Gwen Steffani, the lead singer of the band No Doubt, as she discussed her experience with this situation. She fought to be able to express herself and do some of her own choreography, but ended up having to do and wear whatever the producers wanted until her contract was over. Other female entertainers do not seem to mind at all and even like the attention. Britney Speares was on television within the past month promoting one of her shows with the comment “It’s all about being women and celebrating our bodies and sexuality. It’s about standing up for who we are.” Most people would consider Britney more of a girl than a woman. She is known for being a sex symbol and is one of the last people many would consider an authority on being a woman.
In any case, females are often projected as craving male attention. They are shown as depressed and lonely until a man suddenly appears out of the blue and gives their lives meaning. Females are shown as objects for men to use solely for sex. The video for “Sour Girl” by Stone Temple Pilots is an example. At the end of the video the girl dies and the man just walks away (with two stuffed bunnies mind you). It seems as though the metaphor is that the artificial bunnies can replace the company of the girl as if she was only a material object too. If the guy had died, the next frame would have been the girl lonely and lost or weeping over his body rather than just moving on. Also in this video, the guy caresses her and even manipulates her hands and body to whatever position he wanted while she stands there just looking pretty expressing the sad talent of an inflatable Barbie doll.
Along these lines, women are depicted as brainless. In the videos, they fall helplessly for whichever man pays attention to them first or most. They move, and often even look, like robots performing the same moves as all the others and wearing the darker silvery makeup hues like Britney Speares’s latest song, Lucky. Some videos show them being used and cheated on by their significant others and do not even portray this behavior in a negative light. They are represented as sex deprived figures who need the attention of a man to be complete and happy. These actresses are often in the background of many videos where the lead singers are male. The women just lounge in chairs or dance in skimpy, revealing clothing.
Females are also shown wearing much less clothing than the typical male entertainer. Women dance around in outfits that are either super tight, leather, a combination, or that resemble bras and underwear more than normal clothing. On the other hand, men wear jeans, khakis, occasional leather pants, tee shirts, sweaters, or custom created outfits. While women are bare midriffed with about the same amount of fabric in their total outfit as men have in their boxers alone, men are rarely shown with their shirts off and even then they do not have to be super athletic, muscular, or physically attractive in any aspect. Most men whose bodies we see look like they have never worked out in their lives and are either super skinny or just have no muscle. Blink 18 illustrates this point perfectly. They even show midgets who look like the singers running around in few or no clothes in a humorous light. They are not tanned and toned like the females.
The music video industry represents females in a disrespectful and unfair manner. They show them half naked and emphasize slim, often unhealthy bodies on women while men can get away with any body type or hide it under baggy, long-sleeved clothes. Women are depicted as objects which can be replaced and whose sole purpose is to please men. They are shown as brainless, but entertaining and therefore having a purpose. One cause may be that most music video directors are male; however each and every woman who is unopinionated on the matter or just passively accepts the women’s music videos contributes to the continuation of this kind of gender prejudice. Sadly, the majority of women fall into this group causing the discrimination and flesh fest to continue to worsen. It will continue to deteriorate since there is no opposition even in this society that takes great pride in having equal rights but is blatantly ignorant with regard to the music video industry.
Please note that this sample paper on Blah is for your review only. In order to eliminate any of the plagiarism issues, it is highly recommended that you do not use it for you own writing purposes. In case you experience difficulties with writing a well structured and accurately composed paper on Blah, we are here to assist you. Your cheap custom college paper on Blah will be written from scratch, so you do not have to worry about its originality.
Order your authentic assignment and you will be amazed at how easy it is to complete a quality custom paper within the shortest time possible!
