Over-sexualisation of women in media.

 The over-sexualisation of women in media is a current problem for young people and others alike, making negative stigmas and harmful ideals, for and of women. This is a problem in many types of media including, movies, shows, news, etc.  

It’s a prominent issue in children’s media with many cartoon shows and books (mainly comics). Serving this problem to such a young audience can and will, set a standard for both boys and girls. With girls being shown the ‘ideal’ body type of women leaving them with such things as body dysmorphia, if they do not meet such standards. This is incredible harmful to a lot of people with it causing severe medical issues such as anorexia and bulimia, which can lead to starvation and other problems. There has been shows rated PG, parental guidance, which have animated women who have completely unrealistic proportions and in many scenes have ended up naked. Even though all scenes with nudity have been censored by objects in the surrounding area there is still the underlying connotation that is used in a humorous way, with these women are being borderline sexually harassed and its supposed to be funny? It’s a complete joke. A joke of women’s rights and struggle. 

Many Marvel comics present the female heroine or lead as overtly sexual, have ‘perfect’ bodies and are fish bate for the male-gaze. It gets to ridiculous extents, with whilst they’re fighting they seem to have to wear skintight cat suits. For example the duo cloak and dagger, cloak is male whilst dagger is female. They decided to give Tyrone the power of the cloak, so his body is pretty much covered head to toe. Whilst Tandy is given the power of dagger, a blonde ex-ballet dancer, and her superhero outfit is a white skintight cat suit. This was created by men for men, by men I mainly mean cis heterosexual men. Not to mention the lack of diversity of body types. All the body types are skinny hour-glass figures, not a muscly girl or a chubby girl? Girls with ‘excess fat’ can still be just as agile, or they could have less active fighting skills. For example how black widow attacks is sexual for no reason. It plays into some twisted sexual fantasy for some people.  There is a certain move black widow is known for and its literally strangling people with her thighs. It’s a bit ridiculous in some aspects, because I’ve only ever seen women in the marvel universe doing this, not men. Women shouldn’t be subjected to be seen as dolls for men’s fantasies, because this happens even when they are supposed to feminist icons. 

There is also a trend of sexually advertising children-like characters, these are often excused with the excuse such as “she’s not actually a child, but a 100 year old dragon”. Which is ridiculous, the characters are designed to look like children, its commonly brought up in the show how child-like the characters are, these are referred to as ‘Lolis’. It’s mainly a trend in animation, mainly some animes. It’s accepted by society for these young looking characters to be completely sexualised. 

The over-sexualisation of women in media is a plague in society, it puts back ideas women are trying to fight for. It’s not okay and I hope woman’s presence in media can improve and become more equal with men’s presence. There is still a world of problems with people in general in media, but this isn’t that.