14. Practise Essay

Compare and contrast how women and men are "marked" in the text marked women and killing us softly.

As women and men are biologically differing from each other, they also have some differences as an image in advertisements and in their social life. In this essay the topic will be discussed by referring “killing us softly (Katz) and “marked woman” (Tannen).


For some people women have an advantage because they are weak, vulnerable. And it is thought to be that they get help from the others and get protected so they have superiority because there is no one to give a hand to men. Actually it is not that simple and the usual case which applies for women in real life is not such that. As (Tennan) discussed in marked women, women are the one who usually categorized by some reasons. Even she found herself categorizing the women in a conference unconsciously. Because men have standard clothes and hair cut whereas women have a lot more details which give clues about them. When we try to reverse the situation and make the women to be simple clothed as men, the categorization will still be there. This time the women will be “marked” as not caring about how she looks. In that case women have no freedom to be unmarked whereas men can choose not to be marked by just being an ordinary man. Tannen stresses that women don’t even have a change to fill out a form by not giving clue about themselves because of the differences between Miss and Mrs. In contrast men have only Mr. which is the same for a married and a single man. On the other hand men are also marked and that is their chromosomes XY. Two X makes a female but two Y makes nothing unless it is attached to a single X chromosomes. But it is obvious that this is not a visual thing that strictly classifies men and women as the Miss and Mrs. and this is not the same thing where the women are victim. Also there is a “marked-unmarked” situation in surnames. Women mostly have their husbands name and it shows that a woman has traditional values. If she chooses to keep her surname as well as her husbands than it makes an impression that she should have done something important when she has her family name.

Quiet the same thing applies in media where the producers try to sell their products by the help of effective advertisements in which women’s body are used as an object. Being an object in ads. rather than a subject brings a concept of women’s place in the society which is shaped by the mass media. When the mass media and its one the most important tool advertisements show an image of beautiful, silent, passive women which affects the women’s self esteem in a negative way. Because according to ads. women need to be painfully thin as models and if they are not than they do not have a right to be happy, successful, rich etc. In the same way according to (Kilbourne) the men should be though, muscular, active and sometimes aggressive to be a real a man.

As a person in the society you can not be respected by just being you. You should put yourself into a box whose line is determined by someone else and if you can not conform than you will be marked as man. However as a woman you can not run off from being marked whether you conformed the norms or not.


( Sonja, I tried to stick with the time line that you give and I planned 10 minutes before and 5 minutes to proofreading and 60 to write. I will be happy to get your comment on this)