Media Represents Women in Law Enforcement Two Ways: Hypersexualized or Hypermasculine

For many of us before our Gender and Women’s Studies class, anytime a woman was featured in a movie or TV show as a kick-ass law enforcement officer, we would feel a sense of pride and “girl power.” However, after this class, I have learned to see the way the media misrepresents these once perceived powerful, girl power-inspired women by representing women in law enforcement as either hypersexualized and/or hypermasculine.

In the movie, One For The Money, starring Katherine Heigl as a female bounty hunter, Heigl’s character is feminizied and hypersexualized from her overly sexual appearance to her feminine ways and perceived abilities as a result and, even worse, to the way the movie actually sexualizes her in her own behavior and the behavior toward her by her male costars. For starters, look at the way Heigl is positioned on the cover for the movie:

Heigl is seen with her hands behind her back, handcuffed together by her butt while looking back at the camera with a sultry look on her face, her hair blowing around her. If you look closer, you will see text stating, “She’s looking for a few not-so-good men” which implies the sexualized context of Heigl looking for a “bad boy” for sexual, kinky and/or dominative purposes. The way Heigl’s body is highly sexualized in this advertisment for the movie, reinforces Jean Kilbourne’s statement made in her article “Two Ways That Women Get Hurt” that “the way ads portray bodies – especially women’s bodies – as sexual objects conditions us to see each other in dehumanizing ways, thus normalizing attitudes and behaviors that can lead to sexual aggression.” In this movie advertisment, Heigl is certainly depicted as a sex object meant to be sexually interacted with.

          The way she is sexualized on the cover and throughout the movie also contributes to the misconception that because she is a beautiful, sexy female she can’t reasonably be a good bounty hunter.  

This picture shows Heigl’s character dressed in a business suit, looking terrified of the big gun her male costar is holding. Her very feminine attire and expression in this picture depict her as a “girly girl” who is not cut out to handle guns and crime. The over feminized representation of Heigl in this scene connects with Michael Kimmel’s idea presented in his article “Masculinity as Homophobia” that masculinity claims that in order to maintain the view of males as masculine individuals, we need to “lessen women’s image by feminizing them in ways that prove men are more masculine, powerful, and dominant than women.”

The movie follows her through her job and she is seen struggling with her job and being harassed by men who call her “cupcake” and “sugar” and express doubt in her ability to perform her duties as a bounty hunter. To take matters a step further, one of the criminals she is after happens to be the man she lost her virginity to. This sexualizes Heigl’s character by pointing out her loss of virginity and creating sexual tension and attraction between the two characters. In one of her efforts to track him down, he actually seduces her to get away by acting like he is going to kiss her and then running away. This scene depicts her as a sexual, gullible, and vulnerable woman, which endorses Kilbourne’s idea that women being represented as sexual objects increases sexual harassment, abuse, and violence.

If the media is not hypersexualizing women law enforcement officers as in One For The Money, then the media chooses to hypermasculinze women law enforcement officers. A perfect example of this is the popular law enforcement based movie, End of Watch, which features two women who serve as law enforcement officers for the Los Angeles Police Department.

In the movie, these two women are highly masculinized in their appearance, but especially in the way they act on the job. In terms of appearance, the two women officers are represented as very butch and masculine with little to no feminine characteristics.

Their actions and behavior while on the job as officers is even more masculine than their appearance as they are depicted as very tough, cruel, and insensitive. They participate in mean put-downs with their male coworkers and they represent themselves as masculine and tough, which reminds me of the way Lindsey Feitz in her article“Deploying Gender, Sexuality, and Race in the Iraq War” associates female soldiers as “chicks with guns” who are “deployed in the military as dominatrixes intended for torture and abuse.” In this article, Feitz talks about Lynndie England’s role as a female soldier who tortured and abused Muslim men through sexual harassment and abuse. While the female officers in End of Watch do not sexually harass or abuse their fellow male officers in a physical way, they do partake in verbal sexual harassment through their crude jokes and by referring to their male officers as “bitches.”

Even more masculine than the harassment these two female officers partake in is the way they push back any forms of emotional expression. In fact, in a scene where a female partner gets nearly beaten to death, they act like it is nothing and say “She was asking for it by not being experienced or good enough at her job.” To this, the male officer on scene asks why they are so insensitive and questions what they have done to their emotional, sympathetic side, to which they reply, “We left it at home.” This response confirms the idea that women believe they must act and appear masculine in order to work in a male-dominated field. The perceived expectation that women must masculinize themselves by blocking out their emotional and sensitive side in order to make it in a male-dominated field reinforces Michael Kimmel’s idea that “masculinity is a sign of power and dominance in the workforce, the home, and society” whereas “being sensitive and empathetic is seen as feminine,” which is associated with a lack of power and dominance.

What is your perception of female law enforcement officers and/or FBI/CIA agents? How would you characterize your own perception and description of them? Do you see them as hypersexualized or hypermasculine more often in your consumption of the media?