How are women portrayed in the media?
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Answer:
One Perspective
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sydney from Alias, Kate from Lost, Scully from X-files, Murphy Brown, Rosanne, Ellen Degenerous, Mary Tyler Moore, Charlies Angels, any one of the numerous female detectives on any one of the numerous copshows, any one of the numerous female doctors or nurses on any one of the numerous doctor shows and any one of the numerous female lawyers on any one of the numerous lawyer shows portray tough, smart and independent women who fully understand their power and their potential.
Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Geraldine Ferraro, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Margaret Thatcher, Queen Elizabeth, Princess Diana, and Mother Theresa are all or were very real women who were rarely if ever portrayed as smaller and less confident and outgoing. In order to believe that the media portrays women as inferior one must find women who are willing to be that victim instead of being more like Buffy or Hillary. More and more in this modern age the world is populated with women who are free to be who they choose to be, and the media is not unaware of this and has for a very long time now, willingly praised and celebrated the free thinking woman, they are in fact, those most famous as women who believed they were subject to being smaller than men and less confident and out going don't tend towards fame.
Another Perspective
Unfortunately, there is a 360 degree view of women as they are portrayed by and in the media. While we do have all the positive role models as expressed above we also have that overabundance of advertising and media images that reduce women to sex objects and drive home the message that exposed bodies and looks are what count . . . sexy looks. If you notice the "strong" female characters on popular TV series, they are now required to show cleavage while at work which reduces their credibility especially when the cleavage is being displayed on a rough and tough detective.
The sexualized images of the women in music videos are especially damaging where those women have been reduced to simply an object for another's sexual use. They have no other purpose. The female characters in video games are highly sexualized and clothed so as to focus attention on their breasts and buttocks. The women in the 'girls gone wild' videos think they are expressing their female strength by exposing their breasts for the drunken, screaming male audience and the well paid videographer. Young teens are allowing themselves to be filmed while performing sex acts and then posting the videos on the internet. Many girls send nude photos of themselves via cellphone to any boy who asks.
The young women today are being bombarded with mixed messages and many are embracing the role of sex object. It is a tragic situation indeed. Unfortunately, many of the young women today help to perpetuate it.
Differing opinions: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held talks concerning Libya on Wednesday
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'Thatcherism' distracts from subject
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Oliver Riddell reviews Thatcher's Britain.
THATCHER'S BRITAIN
Richard Vinen
Simon and Schuster, $55, hbk
The life and times of Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first and so far only woman prime minister, remain a source of fascination to historians and analysts.
There have been some very good biographies, but Richard Vinen's Thatcher's Britain does not try to be a history. It is a historical analysis.
Political analysts generally fail because no single book, except on the simplest of topics, can cope meaningfully with all the complexities involved in political analysis. This one doesn't cope particularly well either.
The author admits candidly that he did not like his subject, but that is not the real reason it fails, even though Thatcher's absence
