Sponsor Wanted To Have Sex With Me À“ Miss SD-Times Of Swaziland Sunday

This article may be used to:
Provide learning tips on how women are portrayed in the media. It may also provide tips on how some men portray women as sex objects/ stereotyping is problematic for men.

Trainer’s notes:
The story or headline portrays the lady in question as a prostitute. To me this is a blatantly sexist story about women. By only one look at the picture and the headline the reader is meant to believe that the lady might have enticed the sponsor, by parading in front of him literally naked. I think the media has a wide selection of pictures to choose a front page picture from. Moreover the beauty queen came to their offices to give them the story; they should have used the current pictures they took during the interview. The picture could maybe relevant in the entertainment section. As a trainer I would train the media on package stories/headlines with the relevant pictorials to avoid ambiguity and blatant stereotyping.

Angle I would take:
I would package the story in a way that the Beauty Ambassador is portrayed as role model who is creating awareness to future contestants. This is because the story is not about the beauty queen offering sex to businessmen in exchange for sponsorship. The relevant picture I would put on the front page would be the one on Page 2 (current photo). The sourcing, language and news content is satisfactory, the Gender Biasness of the media is portrayed by the packaging of the front page. This packaging to me portrays the woman as a sex object, therefore is indirectly qualifying the advances of the sponsor (Blatant Stereotype).

Points:
– Women
– Bad packaging of story
– Men/sponsor is having his identity withheld
– Gender stereotypes, woman is presented as a sex object/victim.
– The story is newsworthy but the images tell a different story about the lady.