Gender Opression :: essays research papers

Through the mass media, our patriarchal capitalist system has created the phantasm that Womens Liberation has progressed when sexual practice concernity policies were introduced, such as equal salaries and the right to vote. It has convinced the common North American woman to retrieve that she is not socially restrained, that her accomplishments can be unlimited, that she is in total flash and control of her life. However, conventional norms veiled deeply and expressed indirectly in the mass media continue to dictate and subdue lives according to gender. Seemingly honest short TV ads, still remarkably traditional in word-painting gender routines, condone and reinforce gender oppression. This paper will focusing on the underlying imagery of several advertisements, which help perpetuate gender oppression and reinforce the patriarchial system.The first advertisement was extracted from the popular magazine Cosmopolitan, targeted to a predominantly newborn female adult audience . The ad illustrates a young couple in which the man is kissing the hand of his soon-to-be wife, with an engagement fudge on her finger. The picture itself places both the male and the female in their corresponding gender personas in mainstream society buying his bride an expensive ring, the man fulfills his role as Good Provider and the woman not only volitionally accepts this symbol of belonging to the man, but is extremely satisfied and blissful. This ring, of course, does not authorize short of its symbolic expectations. The act of offering her a ring, the man may be seen as manifesting deep love but he is overly making an investment, expressing it in the form of commitment. In a sense, this is also a form of tenure and possession he is expecting her to completely give herself to him. The subtext to the catchword Platinum. For a lifetime of love also suggests a lifetime of ensured financial security and protection for the woman. It reduces the expression of love to a bra nd of jewelry, merchandising it not just as a product, but as a standardized lifestyle. How can a woman become truly emancipate if she is economically dependent of man throughout her life, typically from father to husband? In the ad, the man has also fallen victim to the expectations of his gender role in society. Under pressure to fit the masculine profile, he mustiness financially provide for his partner and shower her with pricey gifts, not to get up choose a proper trophy wife feminine, attractive, submissive and blessed at everything he does.