Looking Glass Self - Women and the Media

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INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 1101/6-001

6/26/2009


Cooley’s Looking Glass Self and the Media

Sociological theory has often been used to analyze the various shortcomings of the media and to criticize how the media influences our day to day life. In respect to sociological theory, examining how the media affects not only our lives, but our understanding of self-concept, socio-economic relations, and social stability within the social world. Looking at various sociological perspectives, we can see that the media encourages and discourages various types of behaviours, images and people. We create an outline for the “perfect” being that is a combination of conflicting standards, economic factors and perceptions.

The media is a collage of visual representations that has narrowed the definition of femininity, beauty, health, sexuality and self worth of women. Self-concept has become greatly influenced by that of a higher power, which determines a persons’ ability to achieve a positive self image.  Obsession with magazines, actresses, television, internet and other forms of mass media have set the standards of an “ideal” outer self.  This media frenzy has overlapped and diminished the line between reality and an unachievable worldview. “A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience” (Wolf, 1991) Our obsessed culture has slowly yet steadily changed the view of what the “idealized” woman truly is. In North America, the idealized woman is by definition “tall, less than 30 years of age, thin, a size six dress, heterosexual, able bodied and white.” These attributes reflect only 2% of the U.S population. (Lont, 2005)  

Symbols (images) have long represented the image of women in history. Historically, drawings, paintings and other forms of images were used to depict realistic images that existed within a particular culture. Culture is defined as “the knowledge, language, values, customs, and material objects that are passed from person to person and from one generation to the next in a human group or society” (Kendall, Murray, & Linden, 2007) Culture is defined by four separate components: Symbols, Language, Values and Norms. Symbols are considered to be “Anything that meaningfully represents something else.”  (Kendall, Lothian, & Linden, 2007) Symbols are a form of communication that has the power to create, influence and uphold social values, morals and beliefs. In this day and age where media is a transportation form of communication it is easy to see how the media utilizes these cultural definitions and symbols. “Filtering takes two forms  1) deciding not to cover a story an 2) presenting a story in such a way as to diffuse our bias its objective content.” (Herman, Chomsky, 1988)

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C.H Cooley’s The Looking Glass Self (1864-1929) “refers to the way in which a person’s sense of self is derived from the perceptions of others.” (Cooley, 1922/1902) Our self concept “the totality of our beliefs and feelings about others” (Gecas, 1982)  is affected either negatively or positively depending on how we think others veiw us.  

The looking glass self is comprised of three steps; first we imagine how we present ourseleves to other people, next we imagine how other people judge the appearence that we think we present. If we think the evaluation is positive our self concept is enhanced; ...

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