Can we counteract women being portrait as objects?

After reading the two readings of Kilbourne and Perry about woman being portrait in media as sexual objects I was reflecting about 3 things:

a)     You can really only blame media about this situation? I don’t think so. I believe media is one of the main influencers as it reaches a large amount of people and especially women. Trying to add to what Miran wrote on his post, word-of-mouth among women is a really powerful influence. Some months ago I read an interesting book about marketing for women named “Why she buys”. In this book it is described why women are such a great source of purchasing influence and how important is for brands to provide a good service and experience with a brand in order to get their name across. There is also a common saying I used to hear back in college that most women dress and shop only to be seen by other women not only for men which I think it’s true and reveals how vanity, insecurity and a need of self-affirmation are serious issues among many of us.

b)     This idea takes me also to the question…do really women care being objectified? It might be something they even enjoy? Personally, I will never want to be considered an object. While we cannot disregard the impact that advertisement in magazines have in teenagers I am just thinking if those women who appears in hip hop videos are only passive individuals being influenced by media as well as the audience.I think most of them find the easiest way to survive or make good money by exposing themselves in those kinds of ads or videos. Maybe, some others have not had any access of education opportunities and the only way for them to “succeed” might be dancing seductively and showing their attributes. Moreover, I think for most of these women doing this might not mean being objectified but means exerting some kind of power over men. What I want to mean by this is that they have the power of their sex over men and they don’t care if they are being put next to the Rolex or the fancy car. In fact, the idea of being next to those expensive products might give them some sense of “value” and it doesn’t matter if this is associated with a price. I honestly think that some of these women might feel proud about what they’re doing. It is sad but I think some of them feel powerful and role models for other women interested in following this path.

c)      There is any way to stop these media influence or this is going to get worse? My guess is this might get worse. It is kind of an obvious answer but another question I ask myself is there is a way to counteract all these negative influence? There is a huge industry behind all these hip-hop videos and magazines ads and even TV shows and all of them are interconnected. The main reason behind all these sex and beauty industry is creating a constant dissatisfaction with self-image so you can keep buying products and constantly struggle to become as one of these girls. However, this negative influence of media also benefits in a huge way to health industry such as nutritionists, plastic surgeons and psychologists. I am not sure if just education and home or at school would be enough to counteract these negative influences.