The film focused on women being portrayed as highly sexualized objects for men in music videos, primarily to attract the male viewer. What repercussions does this have on the women in our society? The media has created this image of women as only wanting sex, only to please the man. After a while, women start to see this as a norm: other women act this way, so they should as well. They forget who created the videos, and that the sexual aspect is made to please men. I do not believe that, in reality, all women party in their underwear, wash their cars seductively in bikinis, or let men swipe credit cards in their butts in order to get male attention. This is the male fantasy, and women degrade themselves to meet it.
I do believe that some women may enjoy this, but the (music) media presents them as purely overly-sexualized, and only wanting to please men. Women can be sexual, women are sexual, but not always in the same way as men. This is where the "blurred lines" are created. Where does the male fantasy end, and the female reality begin? Lets look at the HBO show Girls, which I will be using throughout my blog because of its more realistic nature.
Jessa for example is portrayed as a woman in charge of her sexuality. She takes on any sexual encounter she wants, whenever she wants, and only for herself. If you look at her, does she appear to be that over-sexualized woman that much of the media has created? She is probably more sexual than most of the women that shake their butts half naked on screen, because she is real. She stands for real women. She isn't made for the male "pornographic mind", she is produced in in light of real women, with real hormones, that don't live to solely please men.
Jessa, like the women we saw in the film today, is shown as a sexual woman, but not through the eyes of a man. Lena Dunham has created her character in a way that portrays a woman's view of sexuality. It seems so surprising that she is so sexual, but isn't running around naked, or shaking her butt, or anything similar to the images created by the media we are use to. I argue that this is because we are so use to a society focused on this "pornographic image" of women desired by men. We haven't even stopped to think what the media would look like if the fantasies created by women flooded the media in the same way. Jessa's character defies the lines created by men in our media. Her presence forces you to look past the lines we have put around the actions of women and ask why more women don't own their sexuality in a similar way to Jessa? What about Hannah, the main character, played by Lena Dunham? She defies these blurred lines in a whole other way.....
