Thursday, April 10, 2014

Super Mom? Option #3

In an article about how women are portrayed in UK media I discovered something that was very shocking to me, not only was it America who had the lack of women in strong leading roles in the media it was other countries too. The article I read discussed how the former HR boss for BBC, Lucy Adams, felt like women including herself were treated extremely unfair in the media industry, "’I think it's unfortunate that the UK media in particular has an idea of women and they're usually portrayed as either incompetent, hard ball-breaking bitches or just one up from a hooker’”(Adams).  It was funny to see how she felt the same way as the authors in the Huffington Post article. 




It amazes me how people can treat women so poorly in the media. What confuses me about this whole subject is that they say the reasons for them portraying women like this are because it sells. Well my question is when we are younger and even now we all find our moms to be the most inspirational person in our lives, so would seeing a character who was portrayed as a Mom who can do anything sell too? Because its not just the women who find their mom’s inspirational it’s also the guys. It is a universal interest so wouldn’t it appeal to both genders and sell?  Why do we as women have to be a sex symbol? Why can’t we be the women next door, the super mom? Why can’t they portray us as people who are soccer moms who work a full time job and still juggle with family duties? Isn’t that we all find so inspiring about women/moms so why can’t this be how we are portrayed? 


I know that these are tough questions that may never be answered but I believe that small steps are better than none. So maybe next time you portray a women as a super hero you give her more forgiving clothes or even clothes in general. Or when deciding whether to chose a 19 year old to play a 40 year old you choose a 40 year old to play a 40 year old. I think if we slowly start to change things then we will see a difference in our media.





http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/apr/04/bbc-lucy-adams-hr-boss-media-women


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