How Has Women Been Portrayed and Objectified in Videos?

Studies have shown significant development and rise of music videos that have major appeal and express various emotions, feelings, and ideas resulting in popularity and financial success. Nonetheless, there is increasing concern about the adverse effects that music has on women's perceptions and its misogynistic misuse. The use of sexuality in music is becoming more frequent and intense. Women have faced constant images illustrating how they should look and how they are anticipated to balance their lives. Hence, women's representation and objectification in the media have led to many studies done. Sexual objectification has been considered the occurrence of being considered as a body only valued for its predominant or helps to others (Rodgers, & Hust, 2018). Most music videos have women wearing anything barely as they match around with no functions but to please a man or offer eye candy. It means that the entertainment media, including televisions, music, and music videos in the current world, objectify the women in society, focusing on depicting them as just sexual objects. This perception is supported by the research, which suggests that popular videos has sexualized image of women with unknown consequences and reasons. How women have been portrayed and objectified in music videos is the question this research aims to answer.

Method

To address the question: how the women have been portrayed and objectified in music videos, the top ten hits from 2019 to 2020 from the music poll were selected. Those two years were selected to represent the current music videos. The sample size used was N=20. Broad Casting Company did the top 100 music poll. The poll requested the listeners to vote for their favorite music and alternative in an online poll that ran for two weeks. The concentration of the music to the just US means the sample is biased and is not representative of music videos all over the world. However, many listeners participate in the voting, and the music videos that were coded illustrated a high level of exposure to content in those different videos.

The analysis unit was the individual characters appearing in the music videos. How the characters wore, a cloth was coded. Some of the videos had many characters who appeared for a few minutes, and others were bundled up together with different types of clothing. The leading characters were coded to distinguish between the male and female. While the rest were considered others and were corded as per the clothing they had on. The level of the sexualization of the character was based on the type of clothing. The coding was done for the presence of nudity and the time an exposed skin was showed; none was coded for those covered from knees to the neckline, partial nudity was for those exposing buttocks, cleavage, and midriffs, and full nudity was those who had no clothing but just hats and shoes..

Result and Discussion

From the table, the music videos were coded for the partially and fully clothed characters. There was no complete nudity which was not surprising as the content of the videos was for the general public consumptions. There was a high level of sexualization in the content analyses regarding how the ladies in the video wore their clothes. Most of the male character in the videos was fully clothed while the women were partially clothed. Other studies have provided a pictorial illustration of women being objectified in videos. As compared to the men, women were more objectified and sexualized in those videos (Aubrey & Frisby, 2017). Thisstudy has provided evidence on the objectification and depiction of females in videos. The four themes that emerged in the videos include the effect of the community framework in the sexual melodic video depictions of women, sexualisation of the ladies in the videos by skin color, lyrical objectification of the women in the videos, and pictorial objectification of the women. 

The hip-hop type of music was found to be more significant in terms of sexual objectification. The likely explanations are because of the socials conservativeness of country music. Previous research has found that objectification and lyrical picture of women in the song videos. The videos had lewd remarks and obscene images about women. They have been frequently being utilized in music videos songs and normalized for people to listen to them. Those words make the women appear as toxic instruments, which illustrates those women are not considered people but objects. For instance, some words used in hip-hop music were established to have more sexualization than other type of music and female were targeted the most in the sexualisation. The lyrics were used to portray the female as immature and that they require security. Women are referred using sexual organs including butt, booty, and ass. 

Some studies have emphasized the prevalence of women's negative images and hypersexualized representations of women in trendy music, which is directly related to the cultural perceptions of maleness, magnified and dominant in current times. By substantiating this notion, there is evidence that music, a prevalent one, significantly impacts how genders have been constructed in people's culture (Rodgers, & Hust, 2018). It is noted that when a song has been played for some time, it gains people's attention. It then becomes acceptable and routine, and whatever is depicted in the song is made acceptable with time. Most music videos are using erotic imagery of females to trade their music videos and promote the thin body image of women. The image of the women are commercialized, whereby the record sell more when they utilize images of women but not any women but those with thin bodies and are half-naked to attracts an audience. 

Western cultures have objectified women more than men in terms of how the women bodied are sexualized, evaluated, and looked at in greater magnitude. Most studies have shown that images and music in the videos can make the viewers create a world they live in. Some studies have investigated stereotyped imagery. Gender in society has revealed the exposure to sexual images affects the equal relationships of people. Society has been made hostage to the media. The movie and music industry has played a significant role in affecting the perceptions of people. Music videos have become an influential form of media. The women have been portrayed as the images of fashion crazy freaks, incompetent career women, and sex objects .hence the represented sexual message in the videos creates an impression with time it contributes t the changes in the immediate state of a person through activating thoughts, leading to impulses of inhibitions and inducing arousal.

References

Aubrey, J. S., & Frisby, C. M. (2017). Sexual objectification in music videos: A content analysis comparing gender and genre.  Mass Communication and Society ,  14 (4), 475-501.

Rodgers, K. B., & Hust, S. J. (2018). Sexual objectification in music videos and acceptance of potentially offensive sexual behaviors.  Psychology of Popular Media Culture ,  7 (4), 413.

Appendix

Coding Scheme