How does the Media Influence Perception of the Female Representation Essay

How does the Media Influence Perception of the Female Representation - Essay typesetters caseGone are the days when beauty lay in the eye of the beholder, and a well-proportioned body was a thing of beauty and object of admiration. But, then, we sustain in a consumer, if not a consumerist, society where consumption means the purchase and use of dandys, leisure activities and services. (Jagger. 2000). Though some writers (Schama. 1987) trace consumerism to the seventeenth century Netherlands, others (Ewen. 1976 Susman. 1982) emphasise that it was not until the years between the First and the Second World Wars in the USA and Britain that consumer culture became fully established.The elusive ideal even out today one hears it said the world over that consumer is fag, or the queen as the case may be, still the insidious brainwashing of the king or the queen by the media at the instance of advertisers has left the queen with no volition. She dances to the tunes of the media, the tunes c totallyed by advertisers who pay the piper. Consumer society develops an increasing need to shop, meaning that soul consumers are increasingly finding the definition of themselves within commodities which can develop a feeling of high or low esteem if they do not oblige the new car, handbag, or pair of shoes presented as the new ideal. (Marcuse 1964).Shakespeare may have had his own reasons for saying in one of his plays that good wine needs no bush(As You Like It), but in todays world advertising rules the roost and answers what amounts really to commodification of the consumer. afterward all, they have come to see themselves in terms of the commodities and goods that they purchase and possess. Advertisers sell the ideal image that most people long for but not all of whom can achieve. That ideal, of its very nature, is unattainable, a mirage that one keeps chasing all ones life, is not allowed to be realised in the palaver of the media.Those who buy the advertised products a re make to image that they are buying the resultant image. Thus, advertising claims to sell a lifestyle through the wares it hawks. Commodities are consumed not only for their use value but also for their sign value (Jagger 2000). That means commodities are bought also for what they signify (p.47) because symbolic consumption is fundamental to the process by which modern individuals create and exhibit their identities.Nature defiedSimilarly, ones appearance does express personhood (Judith Andre. 1994. p. 21). It expresses ones choice, ones values, and ones taste and thus, possibly, ones identity. Thus, what was once considered immutable and the work of Nature is being reworked. For consumer culture to flourish, not only do new images have to keep being created, but consumers need to have reasons for keeping on buying. The reason, Jagger argues, is the desire for the sign, not the commodity itself. In other words, it is not the intrinsic expense or utility of a commodity that influ ences that judgment of consumers but its appearance.Above all, the tendency to keep up with the Joneses, the need to be seen having what everyone wants, forgetting that the ideal is unattainable, combine to help advertisers put consumers into a straitjacket. An obvious example is the television programme MTV Cribs where the rich and the famous show viewers around their homes, and, in the process, show what is most possible something they will never have. However, it is something viewers will continue to