Project Research - Understanding the female in society

As our project is going to focus on the role of women in society, the sexualization of the female body and the ways in which women are represented, I decided to do some research into celebrity culture and the ways in which women are seen in society.

Shockingly, most of the time when women make headlines it is to do with their bodies, beauty, embarrassment or their lives with men. Magazines and the news are always commenting on the looks of women and how they are changing, or what women are doing with regards to men, rarely ever involving their achievements.

Going back to thinking about famous female celebrities I started with a really well known woman, famous for her looks and beauty, Marilyn Monroe. 
When you look at photos of Monroe, she is always seen as looking glamorous, articles always focusing on her latest looks of photoshoots, but what people never mentioned or even thought about was the struggles and issues she was facing behind closed doors.

Marilyn Monroe is now known to have faced a lot of mental health issues that were never spoken about or addressed during her period of fame. This is interesting to me as it shows how women are literally just an item of beauty to the public / media, nobody is actually interested in their well being as long as their leaving the house looking beautiful. She was glamorized as this icon of beauty, but her life behind closed doors was far from it.

Even nowadays, if a woman is in the public eye for something negative, usually it's just to embarrass them or shame them. Women fighting for their privacy or literally just popping to the shops in their joggers are called "shameful" and "unglamorous" because they aren't making an effort for their public 24 hours a day. 

Another example that was brought to my attention is how women are shamed for their behavior compared to men, or if they are seen to be showing more skin than they usually do they are instantly shamed to the public. We could also talk about how celebrities have been being hacked recently, and it's all female celebrities who are having their private photos shared for the pleasure of others.

However, recently there are more and more articles, posts and spokespeople speaking out against this gender bias against women. I read a few articles about how gender bias has to stop, and the shaming of women is wrong, which is a good positive change in society.

I read a blog post on the Huffington Post about the shaming of women, which I found really interesting, and have attached the link.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/johanna-higgs/stop-shaming-women_b_16709906.html

Further research to follow soon.