Global Journal of Human Social Science, H: Interdisciplinary, Volume 23 Issue 5

To What Extent do Female Body Representations Create an Intersectional Understanding of Media Discourse? Chiara Rambaldi Abstract- Despite media significance, a lot still needs to be learned about how women's bodies are (re)presented in media narratives and the ensuing implications of these representations for women’s health. The construction of a uniform socio-culturally feminine image regime of truth owing to the feminine body shape standard evolved due to mainstream Western media’s fascination with a slender female physique (Aapola, et al., 2005). In our culture, those who do not adhere to such aesthetic standards are often left out of discussions about feminine identity (Duncan, 1994). Keywords: female body; media; representation; socio- cultural discourse; identity. I. I ntroduction lthough media appearance norms influence women's perceptions and behaviours, thus allowing body disorders to thrive in such standardised discourse, the tendency to promote the slender female body ideal has elicited little academic attention (Bordo, 1993a). Since scholars have yet to comprehensively address the media environment and related socio-cultural meanings (McGannon, and Spence, 2012), this essay aims to integrate research on media depictions by evaluating socio-cultural change, gender politics, and self-identity, based on an intersectional viewpoint on femininity and body image. Thus, the following question examines such a feminine ideal by addressing: To what extent do female body representations create an intersectional understanding of media discourse? This argument necessitates a preliminary examination of sexuality's historicity and the role of media in such feminine body depiction. Second, this paper will provide an understanding of how patriarchy, market capitalism, feminist criticisms, and Foucauldian conceptions of bio- politics are crucial to the media discourse around today’s feminine bodies’ socio-cultural representations through a study of intersectional theoretical frameworks. The key analytical component is based on an inquiry into how media impact women’s self-perceptions by imposing a restricted picture of society’s female beauty standards; how women objectify their own bodies by internalising an ideal figure that causes ill health; and how such media processes promote self-surveillance, forcing women to conform and objectify themselves to societal power constructs. II. B ackground C ontext a) The Historicity of Sexuality and the intersectionality of media discourse Sexuality and the of media discourse evolved as a response to the European Industrial Age, according to the idea that civilizations could be dominated by an ideal ethnic representation of body image, differentiated by the somatic components of the “other” inferior colonised cultures (Weeks, 1981). The colonisation endeavour established an objectification system where the development of various racialized characteristics was intertwined with the establishment of a dualistic worldview. While colonists’ female bodies were seen as the ideal mainstream symbolic picture of beauty, the colonised ones were regarded as a less respectable non-Western representation of a deviant female form (Doan, 2006; Robinson, 1976). Such a trend for sexuality studies shaped the post-colonial era to become the basis of a mainstream media discourse (Wieringa, and Sívori, 2013). Sexuality, and especially female body representation, was imagined in the format of central core interactions from a Eurocentric perspective, akin to the imperial world map: the “standard” being the usual white skin, a thin woman figure at the core, and the “deviant, “other”, curvaceous woman on the periphery (Bleys, 1995; Epprecht, 2004). The dominant discourse on sexuality and women’s bodily dominance served as a primary indicator of social distinction during the 20 th century, as post-colonial notions of sexuality replicated the colonist construction of non-Western women’s identity (Hyam, 1991; Stoler, 1995). (Post) imperialism, the Cold War, and the emergence of capitalist international development ideologies and policies all had an impact on female instructions of normative bodily practises, and sexual subjectivities (Ahmed, 2005; Loomba, 2005; Manalansan and Cruz-Malavé, 2002; Manalansan, 2003). Bhabha (1994) highlights how globalisation and transnational institutions impacted the portrait of sexual identities from the end of the 20 th century. Conceptual frameworks are aimed at the instruction of a female body type where the Western media dictates over what the ideal female body image should be like, while nations in the Global South are viewed as representations of the less-than-ideal minority culture embodied by the “other” female body (Spivak, 1999). In post-9/11 communications, such perspectives became the mainstream socio-cultural A © 2023 Global Journals Volume XXIII Issue V Version I Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 ( ) H 65 Author: e-mail: chiarafutura@gmail.com