The Headless Woman

So I don’t know if anyone else has noticed but in a bunch of ads there is a woman who is not showing her face. Like at all or just her lips. You see it in: clothing ads, fast food ads, some beer ads and movie posters. Now why is this so? Before we think about just misogynistic men that feel that women aren’t worthy or pretty enough and feel that they have all the rights to sexualize and dehumanize them, lets discuss monetary reasons. Now in terms of  clothing ads, fast food ads and even some beer ads, modeling agencies charge less if the model isn’t recognizable. Which is wrong, many ways, women already get payed less. But doing this just increasing the pay gap. Now I’m already very aware of the pay gap between male and female actors, so I would imagine that the same ideology about paying women less fir not showing their face applies to But movie ads are even worse in almost all movie posters contain an almost naked front side or almost naked back side. It’s somewhat surprising how the standard practice of fragmenting, fetishizing and dehumanizing the images of women we see in film, TV, book covers, and advertisement is still a thing. My case in point the movie Confidence. The four main characters: Edward Burns, Andy Garcia, Dustin Hoffman, and Rachel Weisz.

 

Even in a movie about women’s baseball, A League of Their Own. Including Madonna, Lori Petty, and Rosie O’Donnell, you would think that the movie poster would include any of their faces but no, just some random woman (rumored to be Madonna’s legs but was never confirmed) legs in a sexy pose holding a baseball bat.

But at least a movie about a female superhero with a female director would show the main characters face at least? Right? Nope, manly body and half of a face.

The image of the headless women in Hollywood is not an single example is a conscious sexist act. But the casual dehumanisation of female characters is so socially deep seeded that this  could exist so long without comment. Until we see the end of the faceless female, Hollywood and everyone else needs to speak up about this issue.

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