Women in the media

http://www.slideshare.net/smcmediastudies/the-representation-of-women-in-the-media

Women have always been very beauty conscious and insecure about their appearance. Beauty advertisers have always exploited this by bombarding them with information and ways to ‘improve themselves'. More recently, the idea of being an independent and intelligent woman, not needing to rely on a partner, is ever growing.

Women often suffer from a narrow set of representations in the media. They can often be linked to being domesticated/playing the housewife role or another main stereotype is women being portrayed as sex objects (sexualised and objectified) to entertain the male audience of the media text. 

In advertising and magazines women are shown as young, slim, overwhelmingly white and also conforming to our ideal image of beauty (perfect skin, hair, body shape etc) when in reality the media has constructed this representation to make the models desirable to the audience. 

The Glamorous Ideal - Germaine Greer
Greer says that the media presents an ideal of beauty to its audiences. This is an image that women can conform and hold desirability to. Greer claims that the emphasis on the need to be 'beautiful' and 'sexy' leaves women thinking that if they do not conform to this, they will not be beautiful and are left unsuccessful and useless. The media emphasize how important beauty is and forgets about intelligence, humour and personality.