Women‚ media and misinterpretations

SUPRIYA SHRESTHA

Magic never ceases to amaze us. Be it the odd rabbit out of the hat or those fancily yet scantily dressed assistants, who with a flick of the magician’s wand disappear into oblivion, magic mesmerizes us. So much so that we tend to forget that magic is merely an illusion, deception at its best, a misrepresentation of sorts.

The underlying values of this modern society that we are building are similarly delusional. This emerging generation of ours has been establishing the magic of glamour, fashion, standards and attitude, as new measures of empowerment. This callousness cannot be right. The time has come for us; the silent millions who have a conscience, to draw back the curtains and let enlightenment stream in, for this ignorance can lead to no good. This benightedness is avidly being promoted through the ways women are being misrepresented and objectified in the media. In today’s context, the media is an overwhelmingly influential entity. Its influence is such that it can make the most insignificant of things seem of upmost importance. Simply said, it has the potential to rather inconspicuously master the mind of an individual.

What worries women who seek true empowerment is the way in which young women are presented as mere objects of sexual affection, a mean of pleasure and entertainment. As a result, a woman never makes an attempt to explore herself and bring out her true potential into the limelight, as a certain fear of criticism persists. Fear for she feels that she is incapable of being that misrepresented ideal reflection of what a woman should be like. This fallacy in the name of feminism is seen everywhere.

Advertisements, magazines, movies, commercials etc. – we are bombarded by all these and more, day in and day out. Any of these, if only encountered for a few seconds have the potential to carve out long term perceptions over immature minds. It certainly does encourage them to focus more on their looks and appearances, rather than their aims and goals in life and sway them away from the path of contentment, success and the greater good.

In a nutshell, the time has finally arrived for the media to make an effort to look beneath what really lies behind the delusional veils of ‘prettiness’ and ‘perfect looks’.Beauty is not a fashion statement, beauty lies in feeling beautiful, which is being empowered. Beauty is the reflection of the inner potentialities one possesses that gives one the power to make the world a better place. Good looks are merely in the eyes of the onlooker and there is only one thing sure about perceptions, that they are bound to change.