REDUCED TO PLAYTHINGS

Sir,

On all levels, absorbing sexist media presents the audience with unattainable or objectified images of femininity. This explains the increasing rate of cosmetic surgeries, eating disorders, and related deaths and reveals how mediated images of the ideal woman effect female self-activity.

The question we should ask ourselves is, what is the price of perfection, and more importantly, who defines what perfection is?
Social trends highlight how social media and its ‘ideal’ image of femininity have impacted women in unprecedented ways.
Women have always been objectified in advertisements and entertainment, but has the exploitation gone worse in recent years? Yes, greatly, if you’ve been watching television recently, you’ll agree.

The representation of women in the media has always been exploitative. It has reduced women to being nothing more than objects to be won, prizes to be shown off, and playthings to be abused. It has also created a definition of beauty that women compare themself to. Also, men compare the women in their lives to what they see on television screens, in magazines and on billboards. Both the self and society have suffered because of the objectification, sexism, exploitation and assessment.

Our understanding of the images we see seldom takes into consideration the ‘beauty’ we see are fabrications. These images are designed by graphic artists commissioned to change appearance and stimulate desire. Almost every photograph you see for a national advertiser these days has been worked on by a retoucher to some degree. Fundamentally, their job is to correct the basic deficiencies in the original photograph or, in effect, to improve upon the appearance of reality.

The issue of objectification is so prevalent that it has become a normal thing among young people; they see absolutely nothing wrong with it. Women should not at any point regard themselves as ‘objects’.
They should know that there’s so much more to them than what the media portrays them to be. They should not allow the now sick society of abusers to lower them to a status of an ‘item’.

Women are full of humanity, love, care and respect, they have the ability to rationally set and pursue their own ends without needing approval from men, or anyone for that matter. When a woman is objectified, she is made less than human. Once less than human, violence becomes acceptable!

Mbuli N

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