Sexism takes a more discrete form

Feminist is a word with a negative connotation in American society. The days of being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen are over, but now the type of sexism affecting women has become much more subtle.

The media plays a large role in normalizing damaging perceptions of women. Women are almost always portrayed as ornaments in the lives of men and are almost never seen talking with other women, especially about anything besides men.

Even in this newspaper, some of the images of women could be mistaken for images from soft-core pornography, but that is how many female celebrities choose to market themselves.

Thanks to technology, now there are more ways to manipulate ads and make women appear thinner than humanly possible. Often, only parts of a woman are visible or her body has become incorporated into an object.

Research, such as that of Caroline Heldman and Michael Cahill of Occidental College, shows this has created a phenomenon of self-objectification among women and girls of all ages, meaning they think of their bodies as objects of others’ desire.

Feminist and author Gloria Steinem put it best: “Girls are taught to view their bodies as un-ending projects to work on, whereas boys, from an early age, are taught to view their bodies as tools to master their environment.”

Girls and women “who monitor themselves through the eyes of the male gaze … deny themselves food, have anxiety about their bodies and bodily functions and are likely to develop eating disorders and depression,” according to Heldman and Cahill’s research.

Additionally, they have lower GPAs, lower political efficacy, and are more likely to experience sexual dysfunction.

Of the 535 seats in the U.S. Congress, women occupy only 99, or 18.5 percent. The numbers in other sectors of American society, such as the media perpetuating this system, are equally dismal.

The average women in America makes 75 cents for every dollar a man makes for the same job, even though women tend to be more educated, according to the Department of Labor.

On a global scale, the picture is even worse. Women “work two-thirds of the world’s working hours, produce half of the world’s food, but earn only 10 percent of the world’s income and own less than 1 percent of the world’s property,” according to the United Nations Development Programme.

We can’t change our consumer society, but we can stop consuming damaging media and change how we treat each other. We can stop judging women based on their appearance and refrain from using derogatory language to refer to them.

We should also be willing to start having dialogues about difficult topics, so we can leave the world more equal than we found it.