For those reading this post, please be prepared for truths that are bone-chilling, intense, and catalysts for one of the most important epiphanies you need to have, especially now more than ever.
There is a vicious cycle that is growing ever more lethal to women in broad daylight, though to some of us, it may seem that it is happening only behind the scenes. Many people go through their lives seeing this cycle but never really notice what it is. We only see the end result when it is too late.
Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury in women between the ages of 15 and 44, more so than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined. When it comes to domestic violence “It Rarely Stops.”
Both videos linked above depict domestic violence taking its course in both public and in private. While the first video is more graphic, the second one offers an example of how domestic violence can spark up over something very minor. Keep both videos in mind because they will be tools later on for us to further take apart domestic violence and explain why it is so persistent in our lives whether we know it our not.
Now, you may be thinking, how could I not notice domestic violence if it is so prevalent? The answer is simple: keep reading.
This cycle “starts at birth,” a classmate of mine once pointed out. When someone has a boy or a girl, the gifts parents receive usually correspond to the particular sex of the baby. It would be odd if someone had a girl and you bought them a G.I Joe action figure, and conversely, if someone had a boy you probably wouldn’t buy them a Barbie.
Why is that? Because it would be weird, it wouldn’t fit, it wouldn’t make sense. Why doesn’t it make sense? Because of preconceived notions of what a girl should be and like and what a boy should be and like.
Where do we get these notions from? Two distinct and directly connected sources, media and our cultural and social contexts. These issues have been brought to light through the film Miss Representation, made by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. This film exposes the negative cycle the media creates that affects women and their emotional and even physical health.
As feminist activist and actor Jane Fonda says, “media creates consciousness.” When we watch TV, we unconciously pick up on the patterns portrayed in the many different shows and commercials we watch each day. These patterns follow us through our entire lives and they are what cause certain cycles of violence to follow.
Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, states that, “full brain development doesn’t occur until you’re in your early twenties so the idea that kids at 8 or 10 or 15 have the same level of intellectual and emotional maturity as an adult is nuts.”
These patterns of violent and sexualized images are portrayed to kids that are in these age groups and even lower and they begin to interpret and internalize these patterns in different ways.
The hyper-sexualization of women in the media shows images of women that are only hot, sexy, or attractive. Celebrities are made to symbolize what we find attractive. Advertisements glorify models by altering their appearance with Photoshop. Once their images are “improved” by computers, it provides an even more impossible standard of what women need to look like in order to be considered attractive.
This puts all the pressure on girls because now guys and girls expect girls to look perfect at an even younger and younger age. On top of that, the girls themselves internalize these messages at a young age. If they don’t look like the altered models in magazines and television, they believe no guy will find them attractive and consequently they won’t think of themselves as attractive. Their self-confidence will be greatly affected.
Some girls will go to extreme lengths to make themselves attractive. Conditions such as anorexia, bulimia, and depression all stem from this pressure to be accepted. Since the media values external beauty, being attractive is worth something and if you’re not considered attractive, you are worth less despite one’s personality or intelligence. This isolates women and belittles them.
Age is also another isolator, as only a small percentage of women are showed on TV. Women 40 and over are rarely shown on TV. Women older than 40 start to lose confidence in themselves because now they feel like less of a woman because they have somehow “aged out” of being considered attractive.
The media’s definition of beauty is solely based on the body. The role models on television are slim and beautiful. The majority of girls on TV are put there to fight with each other and be eye candy. The few females that are politicians are even criticized on their looks. In fact, how a female politician is dressed is often the first thing that comes up in conversation. Right away a woman’s looks upstage and overshadow the content of what she may be talking about.
As a result, our culture prioritizes being beautiful over being smart, further silencing women because they will then lean more towards looking good then speaking out.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, advertisements push this over the edge. Living in this world where beauty has become everything, the ad world has used this motif to sell their products. Women barely dressed are used as product placement or they are depicted as objects in misogynistic ways. You may often see violent images of women tied up, bloody, and hurt, all to disturb (or perhaps titillate?) the viewer and create more attention for their ad.
Violent Duncan Quinn image Photo from: Google Images ©
Little kids internalize messages through these ads. If a young boy is exposed to ads like this over time, there is a higher chance that he will commit domestic violence.
To add to the problem, we live in a victim-blaming society, we shame those who have been raped, and blame them and not their attacker. This makes it worse for the victims because they no longer speak up in situations where they are victimized, feeling that it will reflect badly on them.
That is why in the first video above when the women runs her hands over her injuries they disappear to show they’re being covered up and silenced. This traps the victim in the cycle because when they don’t speak up about their abuse the abuse continues. That’s why no matter how hard she tries to cover her injuries, she keeps bleeding and the injuries keep adding up on her body.
Victim-blaming also occurs in the second video after the man throws the girl to the ground and he says it is her fault that he hurt her.
These scenes relate to two articles I read in Ms. Magazine, which related to violence against women. In one article, titled “Misogyny and Elder Abuse,” nuns were being beaten for being activists and vocal towards problems in the church. In the other, called “Behind Closed Doors,” a Chinese proverb justifies violence against women: “Wives-if you go three days without hitting them, you’ll go crazy.” The article goes on to explain how violence against women is accepted without question.
We need to break this cycle of violence against women. We must be aware of what we’re watching AND of what the images and patterns of what we’re watching portrays. We need to analyze and critique it, and we need to speak up about it. We cannot allow the media to become a physical and mental weapon against women.
