By: Sana Saeed
Media is a source of interaction and plays a very important role in shaping our ideas and opinions about what is beautiful and what is not. It can influence our values, beliefs and attitude towards ourselves as well as others. In this patriarchal society, our media is portraying negative aspects about women and showing men as dominant, independent and intelligent whereas women are portraying as passive, dependent and inferior to the men. In most of the media industry, we have seen that women are showing as weak characters and portraying negative image of them.
As in most of the Pakistani dramas we have seen that if a girl is educated and wealthy then her behavior is very rude and she is arrogant to others and don’t even give respect to her elders. And also if a girl or woman is poor she is very nice, humble and kind hearted. She dress properly covering her full body and wear dupatta on her head. But when that girl become rich she wears jeans top and don’t even take the dupatta. It has also shown in the dramas that men have more dominant characters and are more respectable then women whereas women are inferior to the men. So this is the negative thing which our media industry is showing about women. Instead of that, media should portray all this in a very positive sense because media is a source of interaction and what we see on the media we tries to adopt that things so showing negative aspects about women put a negative impact on the young generation. Therefore, women should be portray as strong, confident, intellectual, independent and humble to everyone. And also by making strong female characters and encouraging self-love, it can start to show the world that women are just as capable and courageous as men and deserve equal respect, so that it create positive impact on the viewers and lead towards to the positive society.
Media and advertising play an important role in our culture which reflect the social norms of our society. Advertisements are found everywhere in magazines, newspapers, bill boards and especially on television. We have seen female models in advertisements sensually dressed up for the sake of taking attentions of the customers. Sometimes the female has nothing to do with the actual product but used in order to sell the product. Also media has set a standard for beauty that is beyond natural or even attainable to most young women. Being surrounded by all these advertisements make young women emotionally and physically confused about their bodies. And advertisements for makeup and other beauty products contain the most artificial concept of beauty and the tagline of such products implied that key to look beautiful is thin physique and fair skin.
Business need advertising but advertisements don’t need to display women as objects in order to sell the product. So for this media should show such ads where skin colure and body image shouldn’t be the target to influence the viewers and create gap between the presenters and viewers. Instead, it should made ads where women are shown as having control over their own decisions and as being able to change other people’s behaviors and thoughts and also show such ads where women confidence, her smartness, independency and her skills should be portrayed to put a positive image and spread positive narrative among viewers and young generation to influence by such aspects.
Media has a huge impact on society, so it should influence wisely. If it portray women as a objects for objectifying pleasure then the future generations will grow up thinking this is normal and that women are just what they need in their lives to be happy which could lead them away from being independent individuals who can stand on their own feet. By showing real life situations instead of fabricated ones will help people see what reality is like so they can decide if they want that kind of life when they grow up themselves. And also women should be provided platforms and opportunities nationally and internationally to create a positive image and to prove themselves in order to alter the stereotypical image portrayed by the media.
Leave a Reply