ctor who is also an eating disorders specialist suggests that the roots of the problem go deeper than anything the media might have created (Morant, 2000). It is true that while film and television and advertising influence society, they are also a reflection of it. While that is the case, it also seems as if people, particularly young women have attached themselves to the idea that the superstars as shown on television are near perfect. And while the problem with eating disorders, and Twiggy and Calista Flockhart, is a large part of the self-esteem puzzle, other problems emerge. In many ways, women are portrayed not only as sex objects, but as less than competent. Are there misogynist messages in media and how does that affect self-esteem?By and large, from television shows to film to commercials, women are portrayed in subservient roles. In the ten-year period from 1950 to 1960, mothers had been told, first, that they shouldnt work outside the home, especially once they were married, then that there was no job they couldnt do and that it was exciting and patriotic to work outside the home, and, finally, that their real job was to wash diapers, make meat loaf, and obey their husbands non matter how brutish, dumb or unreasonable they were (Douglas 1994).In the 1950s, the women were the homemakers and did not go to work. Both Alice Kramden and Lucy Ricardo stayed at home and took care of tiny apartments even though each had dreams. As decades progressed, there was Maude and the sexual revolution and finally, when Mary Tyler Moore threw her hat up in the air, the impendent woman had arrived. The eighties and nineties held great strides for women and today, one can see competent spies such as the high-kicking Sydney Bristow on ABC's Alias or Nikita in the USA series La Femme Nikita. And while women are now portrayed on a somewhat equal plane in television shows, there is MTV.Now the actual threatened violation of women permeates the airwav...
