Hegemony in Depicting Women

Hegemony, defined as the capacity of a ruling group that enables it to maintain its power and reinforce its ideology, is always present in the media. People in charge want to convey a message through the media to have people on the receiving end hear it and accept it. Many times we see this in the news, where news stations choose what stories and events to talk about and then put a certain spin on them. For example, a new law might be depicted as bad for the community or a certain group of people, while its benefits are never talked about; this reflects the opinions of somebody in charge.

I've mostly heard the word "hegemony" used while mentioning the news or talking about political or economic intentions, but what I thought about when I heard the word was the control over the depiction of women's roles in media. Women are constantly shown in the media as being beautiful, thin, and young-looking, even if their husbands are unattractive, vulgar, overweight, and seemingly unintelligent. Hegemony, in this case influential men in the media controlling the role of women in TV shows, effectively describes why women are being portrayed this way; men want beautiful women without having to make any effort to look good themselves. It doesn't matter what your man looks like; if you're female, you're supposed to look good no matter what. A fat guy is perfectly fine, even to be expected, but a fat woman is totally and utterly unacceptable.

For example, these promotional pictures from several recent TV sitcoms all consist of a beautiful, "hot" wife and an overweight husband. These women are totally fine with how their husbands look, which isn't bad in itself. In fact, it makes them seem like good people. However, we never see overweight women with extremely attractive husbands. It just doesn't happen.

According to Jim

The King of Queens

Still Standing

This article from Yahoo! Shine discusses the fact that there is an upcoming TV show that features an overweight man and overweight woman in a relationship.

Return of the Fat Female Sitcom Star

We've seen this before with "Roseanne". However, as far as I'm aware, there have been no TV shows where an overweight woman has been in a romantic relationship with a fit, attractive man. This fact just goes to show
that a situation where an overweight woman and a fit man are together is not normal or even acceptable. It simply does not exist according to the media.

Consumers see these shows and think that they are the social norm. TV shows like these reinforce to women the idea that they need to be thin, young, pretty, and smart, even if their man isn't. Nobody will accept them if they're anything different. This is a blatant falsehood, and yet people are made to think it's true because of men's utilization of hegemony.