Women in our contemporary society face challenges on daily bases. They are expected to uphold a certain image regularly. Development of this image has been attained from generation to generation. Society and the influence of the media, transmits images that women are expected to fulfill, and its most important aspect is beauty.
Women are never to appear their age. A young woman should always appear older whereas an older woman should appear younger. The image presented to us by the media about the female gender should always be well kept and beautiful, they always seem to be outgoing, adventures, fit, have a perfect skin, hold a job, keeps a perfect household, never have headaches or colds.
Back in the days women were always expected to behave in a certain way, they always should act lady like. If she dared to challenge the society she was directly referred to as an outcast where she was look down on, that is why we could notice that the advertisements that were done would mainly show the perfect house wife, and the flawless lady.
For my final research paper I'm going to stress on the image of women in general, how it was depicted since the early 60s through the media, i.e. posters, adds, etc. and how it is being depicted now a day through the same means of media, at the same time I'm going to talk about the female image in the Arab world in particular how women were depicted in their society, and how they were portrayed as Arab women through the media, and stereotyping the typical Arab woman. I'm also going to focus on what impact those advertisements have left to the general public and on the female gender in particular be it in the Arab world or internationally.
Your topic is way too wide that you will need to write a book to cover all of its aspects. Narrow it down and focus either on a specific region, a limited period, or a certain medium (ex. housewives in egyptian movies from 1980 till now, or lebanese women politicians in the news, etc) This will allow you to go in depth in your analysis instead of generalizing and getting to conclusions that we know already.
ReplyDeleteAlso do not start giving sweeping statements that are not based on any tangible knowledge. For example when you say 'Back in the days women were always expected to behave in a certain way, they always should act lady like' , when is 'back in the days'? Based on what do you say that they were expected to be 'lady like'? and considering that the ARAB woman is at once the Lebanese, Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian, Saudi, Sudanese, Yemeni, Algerian, Iraqi, and others, can we really talk about what is or was expected of all these women equally? I think not.
You have to inform your research with readings about gender studies and feminism. There are so many books, I suggest you search for a 'reader' (feminism reader) which would include several articles written by different authors covering different aspects of the subject. Try to look for one with something by Judith Butler.