Media Representation of the Self and Subliminal Messages :Past and Present
According to Cushman analysis on
his work in the Self in America personality was associated with power and superiority,
in order to achieve acceptance and fame, people wanted to adopt societal
expectations, such as beauty standards. The social performance played a very
important role in the developing of personality. According to Cushman the
concept of personality was associated with identity. People were in a constant
battle trying to find themselves, who they were, but at the same time that they
were supposed to be. Cushmans talks about how advertising emerged and persuaded
people to “improve their social life”. How was this possible? As we know
advertisement main goal is to sell, and accomplish their marketing purposes.
Throughout ads the population was receiving messages of how important was
physical health and appearance to achieved power and acceptance. There was this
inner desire of physical perfection, however people were emotionally distorted
and mentally disoriented. People were
unconsciously influenced by the new trends and culture. Also they were
bombarded with ads and subliminal messages that promote sexism, machismo, and
gender inequality. Ads being one of the most powerful forms of media persuade
people unconsciously by manipulating their emotions, feelings, overall their
perception of themselves. Wow ! We are talking about the 19th,
surprisingly today nothing has changed! We are still experiencing this
phenomenon. This ads were directed to promote perfection that in that time was
a synonym of power.
I believed that today more than
ever body image standards has become significantly influenced by society
through the media such as TV, Internet, magazines, newspapers, etc. This social
problem affects women more than men. The numbers of women that undergo into expensive
and dangerous plastic surgeries are increasing every day. Society is building
perfect women physically, but mentally insane. The majority of ads that we see
today have high contents of sexism. The media is portraying women as sex
objects for marketing purposes. These issues are degrading the value of women
in society and also affecting them physically and psychologically. Why is so
harmful? .Well The media also affects women self- perception in many ways. Men
refers to women as objects but even women see themselves as objects and most of
the time they act conforming to these attributions: this is the problem! The
media play a significant role on women misperception. Sexism and
objectification in the media have been since a long time ago but every day this
phenomenon is becoming more aggressive.
If we compared today’s advertising with
the past surprisingly almost nothing has changed, on the contrary women’s
prejudice continues nowadays. Advertisements are sexually explicit and attack
women capabilities very openly. ……Self-objectification and a distorted body
image impact mental health in a significant way. According to research done on
this topic, the cause of this issue has to do with the behavioral
manifestations to what they referred as body surveillance. Women get obsessed
with the idea of perfection and start extreme diets and routines of exercise.
The problem with this is that many advertisement have the power of play with
people emotions and feelings, they can change the way a person thinks about
himself. Unfortunately ads have the potential of influence people’s minds at
the point that they can manipulate their desires and the way the manifest their
personality. Sometimes this message distorted self-identity. The message that
the media should promote is that women and men do not need to conform to set of
roles and that they have limitless possibilities for happiness, which involves
mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual balance.
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