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

through daily practices, as societal power forces female bodies to accept patriarchal dominance (Bartky, 1988). Thus, women alter and even mutilate themselves to identify with standardised socio-cultural depiction. A woman must cultivate a beautiful self-image to be attractive to everyone else. Otherwise, she will be scrutinised and judged as an “otherising”, “different” individual who does not fit into the predominant socio- cultural representation of beauty. IV. C onclusions Many women’s difficulties with body acceptance are linked to a socio-cultural image of what an ideal feminine shape should be. The ability to normalise being thin and slender as societal standards of beauty and femininity to be normalised is mainly established by the media, which determines such socio-cultural norms (Binnie, 2004). Such normalisation of feminine beauty through media, as Levi-Strauss (1958) notes, has developed cultural and gender markers socially accepted as social truths. Media devices use to convey notions about ‘body image’ in a way that suits markets’ financial aims. This, in turn, reproduces body image as a fundamental organising characteristic of women’s understandings of their identities. This essay discussed that the representation of female bodies is entrenched in the media’s power to construct female thinness and their related discourses. By exploring the embedded socio-cultural representation of femininity, female bodies become the means by which a patriarchal order is reinforced in society. Accordingly, pressured to conform to the idealised norm of beauty, women are reduced to their sexualised bodies and become passive individuals or docile members of society. This study aimed to demonstrate the effect of the media in promoting female thinness and associated discourses on the topic of female body representation cultivates a patriarchal structure in society. The latter feeds capitalist markets by pushing women to work as clients to meet the idealised standard of feminine beauty. While women’s identities are sexualized, feminist and counter-public critiques of such socio-cultural representations still remain far from deconstructing what has been recognised as the feminine regime of truth, and this study aims to build on such counter-public criticism. B ibliography 1. Aapola, S., et al., 2005. Young femininity: Girlhood, power and social change . New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2. Ahmed, S., 2005. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others . Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 3. Bartky, S., 1988. Foucault, feminity and the modernization of patriarchal power. In I. Diamond and L. Quinby (eds), Feminism and Foucault, Reflections on Resistance . Boston: Northeastern University Press. 4. Basu, A., et al., 2001. Globalization and gender. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society , 26 (4). 5. Bhabha, H., 1994. The Location of Culture . 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New York: Pantheon. © 2023 Global Journals Volume XXIII Issue V Version I Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 ( ) H 68 To What Extent do Female Body Representations Create an Intersectional Understanding of Media Discourse?