There is a great divide in the world between the roles of men and the roles of women. It is nothing shocking to hear talk of the glass ceiling or of the wage gap between men and women but what we often don’t think about is the media consume, and who is giving it to us. Each year since 2012 the Women’s Media Center has published a report about women in media, and the persistent gender imbalance in the media. To pull back and look at it from it’s most base level, we can look at the cover of any men’s magazine, GQ for example, and see the differences in how the genders are portrayed.
While it is true that GQ is a men’s magazine and thus their target audience is not young women or really women at all, this is the perfect, albeit a tad obvious, example to look at when discussing gender in the media. These are just three example but there is an overarching trend in print that the less a woman wears the more someone will be interested in “what she has to say”, whether it’s really what she has to say or what her body is trying to tell you is also up for your own interpretation.
This is not only limited to men’s magazines though. By and large women’s magazines are using sex to sell copies as well, just on Sunday, April 27, Rihanna posted outtakes from her shoot in Brazilian Vogue where she is wearing nothing more than a gold bikini bottom, some gold jewelry and, in a few photos, a large brimmed sun hat. While there is a difference between those photos (pictured below), and the ones posted above, it is easy to see that women are more and more accepting that their bodies are a promotional tool.
There is an argument to be made that Rihanna (and Beyonce and Rita Ora, pictured above) are all adult women who have the decision to do with their bodies as they please and have been know to star in more “provocative” photo shoots, and you’re right. That is a perfectly valid argument. But who can forget about the Miley Cyrus/ Annie Leibovitz scandal of 2008? Though Miley is known now for bearing it all in 2008 the starlet was just 15 years old and seductively posing topless for Vogue, arguably the most female targeted magazine in circulation.
I’m not saying Miley was taken advantage of and I’m not saying that everyone’s beloved bad girl Rihanna needs to put her breasts away, all I’m saying is that it is time to wake up to what the media is doing. They are portraying men as strong, confident and macho and portraying our women as fragile, non-dominant, or solely sex objects. I think Rihanna and Beyonce are two of the most empowered female examples I could have chosen, but when you look at their GQ covers do you see empowered or do you see sexy?
images of Rihanna for Vogue Brazil via Instagram: @badgalriri
ethics of fashion advertising 