Pamela on Sexism

What is sexism? Well, by dictionary definition sexism is the discrimination against women or men because of their sex  or the tendency to treat people as cultural stereotypes of their sex .

Couple weeks ago we had a class on sexism. We watched a documentary called “Dream World 3”, it talked about how women were being portrayed in music videos and how the people watching these videos were interpreting and integrating what they’re seeing  in real life. This documentary showed music videos that I am used to seeing and never thought anything of them, because I didn’t look past the music. I always saw these girls as pretty women and never paid attention to the story that was being told in the video. In these videos the female body is objectified, women are portrayed as empty status symbols  and decorative objects of male desire. They are shown as passive creatures that accept everything that men does to them.

 I wanted to talk about this documentary and the whole thing about sexism because as a young women growing up I have seen girls around me trying to look like these video models and trying to look like them. I am not going to lie I used to strive to look like a video model I wanted to be thin and “pretty” like them. I am no different from these other girls out there wanting to act like them. I was disgusted and mad at myself that night just by watching these videos and realizing what I had been doing for long. It also made me realized that for a while I stopped looking up to these standards of beauty. It is not ok for women to be treated like objects, it is not ok for men to under estimate us we are worth so much.

A few years back I was scared to wear certain types of clothing because I was self conscious about my body image I always thought that I wasn’t thin or pretty enough to wear them, because I looked nothing like these models. It wasn’t until last year that I stopped worrying about these little things I told myself that I would stop it because it shouldn’t be that way, no one should care about these minor things in life and I learn how to love my body the way it is . There are way more important things that I need to focus on, the less time I will spend on worrying about my body image the more time I will have to devote myself to important things going around the world and actually do something about it.

Watching this video made me realize that even more, people need to stop portraying women as objects and start to see them as the strong human beings they really are not only in videos, but women also need to break these cycle where they need stop following what is going on in these videos where they only serve as objects and stop striving to be carbon copies of the imaged object of male desire.

When I finished watching that documentary I told myself that I would no longer try to be one of these women who strive to reach society’s standard of ‘beauty” nor would I let anyone around me do it to themselves. As women we should not let society fix  our standard of beauty because everyone is beautiful no matter what size or race you are . I realized that here in South Africa there is less pressure at least on me to look like that because people have way more important things to worry about. The media here talks more about politics and things that really matters. In the U.S all you find in the media is how models, actresses gained weight  and where people make such a big deal out of it, I feel more pressure there to worry about how I look and how much weight I need to lose. It is still something that I am working on, it is a slow process and I know that someday I will no longer worry about these artificial things.