Wednesday 26 March 2014

The Differences in Images

The results of searching "man" and "woman" on google images, pinterest, and flickr:

Google images, a biased search engine, shows images ranked by demand. The most searched for images that are also tagged as man show influential public characters, famous actors, but mainly men in suits. The 5 related searches google offers are: Human, Clipart, Standing Up, Symbol and Stickman. For women however, google offers us photographs of women's faces, all but one are young, and all but three are striking a sexual pose. The 5 related searches google offers us here are: Wonder Woman, Standing, Average Woman, Symbol and Silhouette.  Standing and Symbol are the same related searches for both genders. None of the related searches for men offer a comparison like the search "average woman". You can also barely compare the "Stickman" search to the "Silhouette" search. Though both are simple black on white blockings of colour, the Silhouettes are sexual, the stickmen are not. The "Clipart" search shows stylised drawings of male characters, none of which seem sexual in any way. Wonder Woman? The only female superhero in the Justice League? She is still a very sexualised character, dressed in little more than a bathing suit. The "human" search google offers for men is also a rather neutral search, and seems to be more focused on anatomy. 

"A man in a tux to girls is like a woman in lingerie to men" - meaning: a tux, a symbol of authority, success and power is equal to lingerie, "undergarments which are designed to be visually appearing or erotic". This statement means that the only way women can achieve power is through being a sexual object and erotic.


"Be a girl with a mind, a woman with attitude, and a lady with class" "You can't rely on how you look to sustain you. What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion..." "A woman should never.." 
Instead of visual images like above we get rules for women how to act, how to achieve true beauty (by being a snow white character). These images police behaviour, however they do so in a subtle and sneaky way. 


Model shoots, panoramic landscapes, close ups of faces - the results on flickr are probably the most similar. Still we get a crude anatomical drawing of a man, and nothing comparable for the search "woman". Also noticeable; all the woman are universally attractive according to cultural standard - skinny, symmetrical faces; whereas the men are less so. Come to think of it, is there even a cultural standard of beauty for men?


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