Examples of sexualized masculinity and sexualized femininity in media

Over and over again our culture provides examples of male and female ideals in terms of physicality, occupation, and societal roles. These ideals are often very difficult if not impossible to accomplish for the average man or woman in our society, yet the media portrays these standards as normal and expected from a very young age. The first example of this physical ideation goes to comic books. From inception in our society, the viewers of comic books, most of which are young adults or children to which they are targeted towards, are given visual and narrative examples of the way men and women are to be. Men are hyper-masculinized with large muscles, brave and courageous personalities, and rare physical attractiveness in many cases or physically domineering or intimidating characteristics in many other characters. The women in the comic books also serve similar but feminine characteristics. The female characters are always physically sculpted and would be considered beautiful. They also rarely serve in roles that give them leadership over their male counterparts. These themes all work to serve the same end in promoting the idea that men are the heroes of our society and characteristics that are exhibited by these heroes is ideal. Unfortunately in these stories, they almost always end in some kind of violent confrontation, where two polar opposites fight toward victory of good versus evil, if not certain death. All of these characteristics become a part of the engendering process in to our society that teaches young boys and girls what qualities are considered ideal within them, which ultimately guides their development.

Further along in to young adulthood, children, both boys and girls begin being subjected to advertising and media revolving around videogames which further amplify these characteristics. Male characters follow the same guidelines that comic books seemingly do, where large, muscular and either attractive of terrifying characteristics rule whereas in women beauty is key.

Often characters who do not exhibit these qualities are those which either play roles of weaker or helpless characters or villains. In many different types of media, whether it be film, television, games, comics, books or any others, villains are portrayed as the antithesis of the hero. They are often misshapen, ugly, and dark. What message does this send to those that don’t or can’t ever achieve the physical ideal? Not only are those who are not ideal less than, but they are in conflict with or against those who are the ideal.