We often observe in movies, tv series, and advertisements that specific body parts are portrayed and overly sexualized for advertisement. The portrayal of “Headless Women” is still a common practice of fragmenting, fetishizing, and degrading female images in cinema, television, book covers, advertising, and other media. By decapitating or fragmenting the woman's body into decontextualized sexual bits, she becomes an absolutely passive object of male gaze. Along with her head, the question of her permission is eliminated entirely, and her sole function is to be obediently stared at by males. Her worth is based only on her sexual attraction to men, not on her individuality. These pictures, which have been used in advertising for years, educate our minds that a woman's sexualized parts are the same as a sexual woman herself. Furthermore, we recognize other persons based on their facial and personality traits. The face is what distinguishes us as individuals. That, too, is taken away, and we are encouraged to strive for an ideal that will make us all the same and replaceable.
The sexualized female body parts are separated from her completeness by the continual fragmentation of women's bodies, with a special attention on the boobs, butt, and lips. As a result, the observer does not have to ethically reconcile the objectified lady with her whole humanity as shattered bits. When I think of it, it easier to spot the same patterns even in cartoons. Miss Ballem’s face was never revealed in power puff girls and the Nany in Tom and Jerry was also headless. And if we take a look at their characters miss Ballem was mayor’s secretory, a hyper-sexualized character, with her body curves amplified but faceless and as passive as a character could be. She had no role but keep the attention of the audience as an object of desire. And the Nany from tom and jerry was literally a cat and there was no need to give her a gender but they choose the female gender for a passive character like her. Showing such characters to kids only engrains this objectified idea about female gender in their minds and further perpetuate the messed up stereotypes around genders.
Apart from women's faces not being shown in mainstream media due to their overly sexualized portrayal, another factor is often also at play. This is the idea that women aren't even worthy enough as members of society to show their faces, and, this is especially prevalent for women of marginalized communities.
For instance, Mammy Two-Shoes is the only African-American character in Tom and Jerry, a show with millions of viewers worldwide. Her face has never been shown, and instead, the camera's focus has always been around her large bust and bottom. Though this is blatant sexualization, this not-showing-the-face creative choice has only occurred with the sole African-American character; the white female characters have always been fully shown.
Therefore, not showing…