Women's Portrayal in Media Annoys Me

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I'm not a feminist. But it does get on my nerves when I can't find a single woman on television I can actually relate to. I know I must not be the only one.

Women seem to either fall into two categories according to media: super sexy, direct, feminist icon, or some damsel in distress love-interest thrown in for sex appeal. I get that women are embracing their sexualities, and that's great. But there's more to women than just sex.

Even women who are supposed to be strong and independent (I could list pretty much any of the popular women singers right now) are so hung up on looking, and talking, and being sexy, they are almost as bland personality wise as the previously mentioned damsel in distress.

I want to see some women with actual personalities. You can be sexy if you want, just please, please show me some other adjectives with which to describe you!

Amy Farrah Fowler is the most interesting celebrity IMO. Certainly not "sexy" but still interesting and appealing.

There should be more androgynous females, such as myself...that said I don't really concern myself about whether or not I relate to women on t.v, most t.v nowadays seems to be garbage anyways.

I do like those two actresses that used to play the news-reporters for weekend update or whatever on Saturday night live always thought they where funny and didn't/don't seem to be over the top feminine.

sure it won't be on the propaganda-outlet with feeds your addiction to consumerism

"La femme-enfant" or .....the lucratif construct of it.
La femme-enfant est plutôt bien vue dans la société/ The woman-child is rather welllooked upon in society.(harhar, how come, would that possibly be of any interest ?)

What does the term “femme enfant” mean to you?
Simon Porte: The femme enfant is this very French idea of a woman who never quite left childhood behind. You couldn’t quite tell whether she is a girl, a woman, or a girl trying to be a woman. It could be a 20 year-old girl or a 40 year-old woman who, taking her kids to school, realises in some ways she is more childish than they are. My own mother is a bit like that, but she always expresses it in a very subtle way. A true femme enfant is never too obvious or exaggerated.
Why did you decide to make a film about her?
Simon Porte: The femme enfant was the inspiration behind my collection. I’m quite obsessed with the idea of childhood, the fun, the playfulness, the carelessness… and I think it always shows in my collections; but this season, as I was designing, I started to imagine all this story about a young femme enfant who lives like children live: she plays, she draws, she eats… and I translated all that into the naïve shapes, the colour contrasts and the oversized graphic shapes of the collection. And, since the collection started with a story, it quite naturally turned into a short film.
http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/art ... mme-enfant

"In 1970 the movement was called 'Women's Liberation' or, contemptuously, 'Women's Lib'. When the name 'Libbers' was dropped for 'Feminists' we were all relieved. What none of us noticed was that the ideal of liberation was fading out with the word. We were settling for equality. Liberation struggles are not about assimilation but about asserting difference, endowing that difference with dignity and prestige, and insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination. The aim of women's liberation is to do as much for female people as has been done for colonized nations. Women's liberation did not see the female's potential in terms of the male's actual; the visionary feminists of the late sixties and early seventies knew that women could never find freedom by agreeing to live the lives of unfree men. Seekers after equality clamoured to be admitted to smoke-filled male haunts. Liberationists sought the world over for clues as to what women's lives could be like if they were free to define their own values, order their own priorities and decide their own fate. The Female Eunuch was one feminist text that did not argue for equality." in Greer, Germaine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Female_Eunuch

Breton‟s conception of the femme-enfant as an enchanting, liminal and rebellious figure has often been dismissed as a conservative, and ultimately sexist, idealisation. According to Whitney Chadwick, the surrealist search for the woman-child' was one for a figure whose presence 'inevitably, and perhaps more than any other single factor,' worked 'to exclude woman artists from the possibility of a profound personal identification with the theoretical side of Surrealism.
www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk/papersofsurr ... iles/McAra 13.9.11.pdf

---- oh well , finely someone agrees on this imposture-thing (imo)
Other controversial points in this book include Greer's opposition to accepting male-to-female transsexuals as women: "Governments that consist of very few women have hurried to recognise as women men who believe that they are women and have had themselves castrated to prove it, because they see women not as another sex but as a non-sex. No so-called sex-change has ever begged for a uterus-and-ovaries transplant; if uterus-and-ovaries transplants were made mandatory for wannabe women they would disappear overnight. The insistence that man-made women be accepted as women is the institutional expression of the mistaken conviction that women are defective males."

My wife laughs at me when I point out the average-looking women in commercials (as opposed to the too-perfect fashion models), and say something like, "They're finally starting to use real women!"

I agree with the OP, women are otherwise portraying sexy lust-interests for the male hero to persue, or helpless damsels for the hero to rescue. Either way, it seems that the female lead will eventually reward the hero with sex, and they all live happily ever after.

A most notable exception was Ripley from the 'Alien' franchise.

A movie, TV program, or even a commercial is much more believable when the women (and the men) look and act like people I know and encounter every day. I'm really tired of the seemingly endless parade of buff men and busty women who can survive a disaster with perfect hair and their makeup intact.

I would really like to see a program where the people aren't so artificial, and where they face real-life consequences of their actions.

I have wondered about the media portrayal of women, and view it as objectification disguised as sexual liberation. Take Miley Cyrus, Beyonce, Katie Price, to me their category of women are realists, women are often portrayed as objects and there is money to be made if you have the appearance that sells. I assume they take the attitude of ‘it’s only some skin’, and play the game, knowing how the real world works.

The benefit to them is monetary, for impressionable young star struck women though there aren’t the same financial rewards, but they can still aspire to being a desirable object. Becoming the absolute consumer is a good method to achieve this. The access to porn has altered the perception of sex, a few clicks and Ta-da, as much objectification as desired for gratification purposes.

In the hero's journey archetype there are definite roles for women,
the love interest being one.

Its a lack of imagination also, and women either have to be ass-kickers like buffy or sexy.