Self Consciousness On Women Of Our Society example essay topic

It is 21 century now, and we have always said the self-consciousness of women that our society offers to females is more and more awake. However, if we look at the advertisements, which reflect the general thoughts of our society, we will start to wonder does the society actually offer fair self-consciousness to women? As time goes by, the advertisement of each age just proves that women are denied the opportunity to having fair self-consciousness. A good example is that after 1910, most Chinese advertisement agents started taking advantage on a new idea, independent women, by selling their products. However, this independent-woman type of advertisements did not reflect that our society becomes more just to females at all.

Instead, these advertisements delivered the wrong concept of being an independent woman to females. The Figure 1 is an advertisement for Grande, Price, & Co from 1934. From time immemorial, it is very improper for a lady to sit with her legs crossed and to drink wine in most Asian countries even though in the present day. Accordingly, why did this beautiful, fashionable lady sit with her legs crossed and drink wine? The reason was that un-ladylike behavior implied the independence in women, and also intimated the release of the bondage of women in that time of China. In addition, the cheongsam that she wore was much sexier than the traditional cheongsam that you can see her brassiere indistinctly.

Moreover, the traditional cheongsam did not have a lace petticoat with it. Lace actually started being used popularly when Chinese were quaintly worshiping everything foreign. Finally, if you look carefully at the picture, you can figure out that there were two glasses on the tea table, which strongly emphasized that she was not alone. Isn! |t this advertisement contradictory? This advertisement is trying to sell its product by sending a message: you will be a new woman of the current age if you take my product. On the other hand, the new woman, whom the advertisement expressed, could not be independent of her emotion instead, since someone had to accompany her.

Certainly, drinking wine or sitting with crossed legs in 1930 of China might symbolize the abandonment of past order of females, but using a beautiful sexy woman as an idol to represent an independent woman made the standpoint of this advertisement become very weak and powerless. All in all, this advertisement presented nothing but a beautiful woman with distorted external independence, since it still could not jump off from the blind thought that our society expects women to be. Woman, an object instead of an individual. Another advertisement, figure 2, was for Tsai o Company in 2002, which said that! S STony entices me flirtatiously, !" and at the bottom it stated! SSthe whole new idea of 2002 summer makeup.

!" We can tell that the face of Jolin, the girl in the advertisement, was attractive, confident and careless to the man, Tony, who was after her. Furthermore, the way that Jolin stared at the reflex from the mirror also tells us that she is quite proud of herself. What is Jolin able to be proud of? Her arrogant attitude? Her over-thinning appearance or her admirer Tony? In brief, this advertisement was just following what most advertisements in Asia prevalently prefer to use, a bad beauty.

What does a bad beauty tell us? A gorgeous lady is bad, because she does not obey the traditional manner and does not need men, and she subverts the etiquette. Certainly, a bad beauty is independent in some levels, since she chooses what to obey and does not let man be her master but herself. However, why do we have to use a! SS beauty!" instead of a general girl? This way of making advertisements is just a blind spot when we talk about an independent woman.

At most, these two advertisements just reflect! Sussex sells!" (Taipei Times) in our society, and sex sells is just a cheap trick in human beings. Nevertheless, such a make-up advertisement also using sex sell to female consumers tells us that women also do accept unconsciously to be an object instead of an individual, and this statement is the saddest part for women. It is not sad to be a slave but acting servile.

Furthermore, this advertisement just reflects the sick self-consciousness of independence in women to Taiwanese society. Jolin, as so far, tell me what you are proud of. If we compare these advertisements together, we can find out that the agents of these two ads all tried to establish an image: an independent, beautiful, bad woman. Tragically, the limit of the independence in women is fine appearance eventually, and the independence that these two advertisements were talking about so hard was only relative to our realistic world, and the value of the independence that our media offers to women is such a cheap joke. Still, the idea of independent women is just what our society wants but females! | desire of self-consciousness. At the maximum, the independent woman is just an object that represents the progress of our society.

Surely, it is totally unfair for woman to accept such sick self-consciousness. However, women cannot just sit there and wait for the awakening of our society, even though our society does awake to women's self-consciousness in some few parts, but this self-consciousness on women of our society is society's own awareness of female self-consciousness, and such consciousness can do nothing to women, because, as Susan Bordo said in her! SSHungry as Ideology!" that! SS advertisers are aware, too, of more specific ways in which women's lives are out of control!" (Page 144). After the first advertisement to the second one, it has been seventy years for Chinese society to awake. However, the second advertisements still presented a woman who tried to express the release of social unfair discrimination on females in the same way as the first one did, a bad beauty.

Hence, does our society progress? Not at all! These advertisements just told us that the society do not offer women fair self-consciousness at least for seventy years. The reason that! SS bad beauty!" always be doted by the advertisement agencies is that not only our society prefers to see a bad beauty but also women do, too. Of course, being a bad beauty does not extremely mean that women have no self-consciousness at all.

However, the most important is women's attitude of acting a bad beauty. In the present, women have been eager to their self-consciousness by seeking for the total equality of men and women for a long time. From 1920, the United States Congress past the right of vote for women, which women has struggled for 81 years (Dajiyuan Daily News), to 1999, the equable law of working environment for women in Taiwan (Frontier Foundation), and now the marriage law in China, all show that our society does respond to women's requirements in a satisfied or unsatisfied way. Women ask for a fair jumping-off point from our society, but still, there are a lot of unjust social phenomena, which show our society not quite so fair so far. Hence, under such a partial society, how does the self-consciousness of female reach the acme if women only expect the society to respond all their requirements?

Women will not dig out their stable self-consciousness if they anticipate that our society fully participate this digging movement. In addition, the awareness of society's female self-consciousness will only be found at the conflict of each age, and this is not the stable consciousness that women desire. The consciousness that women are supposed to look for is those able to stand at every different period of times. Accordingly, women should not consider the total equality of men and women as the main path to their self-consciousness.

The awareness of society's women self-consciousness, such like the right of vote, the equable law of working environment and marriage law, is not the self-consciousness that females eventually want. The society's awareness is just another varied type of society's own self-consciousness. Again, there is nothing wrong to be a bad beauty; however, it will be a mistake if you cannot find out any self-consciousness from the bad beauty except beauty. Nevertheless, with the absence of internal consciousness of the bad beauty, the self-consicousness, which is built by the external appreance, will eventually become a vainglorious fake.

Women have to admit that the most horrible is not how our unfair society monitors us but that women's minds become to accept the external self-consciousness of our society subconsciously and forget their own consciousness. Women have to realize their own internal consciousness first, so that they will know who they really are and what they are supposed to do. Consequently, women will be able to affirm the values of their existence and will not be wavered by the subjective world. Furthermore, females will get the balance between the expectation of women of our society and women's own expectation to themselves. Accordingly, the stable women self-consciousness will be born under every kinds of society and not be shaken, even though our society has not actually offered fair self-consciousness to females. Hence, it that really important to argue that women have been considered as an object instead of an individual by advertisements if women's consciousness comes from their own but society?

Of course not! Work Cited Gavin Phipps.! SS! |Sex Sells! | Is Not A New Idea. !" Dajiyuan Daily News.!

SSThe Consciousness of Global Women. !" web Frontier Foundation.! SSThe Progress of Women's right. !" Susan Bordo.! SSHungry as Ideology. !" Ways of Reading Eds. Bartholomae, David, and Another Retro sky.

Boston: Bedford / St. Martins, 2002. Page 144.