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The role of the media in influencing public policy
Impact of gender in media
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An Ideal SELF Woman?
Americans live in culture full of numerous gender codes. Gender codes are imaginary rules of how males and females should live and are created within America by the media such as TV shows, movies, billboards, magazines, and advertisements. In "Gender Codes in the American Culture", Jack Solomon and Sonia Maasik believe that "Gender codes are socially, not naturally, constructed, and usually reflect cultural values rather than natural facts" (476). This supports that the media creates gender codes because it is the main method in which cultural values are presented. They present what is accepted to be masculine and feminine in America at the time, and society follows these generalizations of what it means to be a man and a woman, thus creating gender codes.
A lifestyle magazine is an example of a one type of media that creates gender codes. It is easy for lifestyle magazines create gender roles because they idealize a certain type of man or woman because they address the aspects of everyday life in their articles, advertisements, and features. They show their readers how the ideal man or woman lives their life. SELF is one lifestyle magazine that does just that. SELF is a lifestyle magazine for women between the ages of 20 to 50 years of age and it focuses on giving their readers information and pointers of how to live a supposedly well-rounded life. SELF creates the feminine ideal that a woman be competent in every aspect of her life.
According to SELF, being competent in every aspects of a woman ' s life includes being health conscious, eating right, having scheduled weekly workouts whether at home or in the gym, keeping yourself well groomed, dressing fashionably, being independent, having healthy r...
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...er life, and if she isn't, then she should be working to fix that in order to achieve this ideal status. This ideal woman creates a gender code for SELF readers.
Works Cited
Blum, Deborah. "The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over?" Signs Of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. 4th edition. Ed. Sonia Maasik, and Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin's, 2003.495- 501.
Maasik, Sonia, and Jack Solomon. "We've Come a Long Way, Maybe: Gender Codes in American Culture." Signs Of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. 4th edition. Ed. Sonia Maasik, and Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin's, 2003.475-483.
Wolf, Naomi. "The Beauty Myth." Signs Of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. 4th edition. Ed. Sonia Maasik, and Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin's, 2003.515-524.
How are gender constructs evident in modern society? In Charles M. Schulz’s Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown, Schulz presents views of gender that reflect common perceptions of men and women. While some representations of the characters are accurate, others stereotypically portray both genders. Representation of responsibility, leadership, strength and identity are all presented inaccurately in connection to sexual identity. Although men and women are mutually recognized as leaders, Schultz’s book displays unequal and stereotypical depictions of both genders.
Many magazines like Cosmo encourage women to make themselves up, to change themselves for men. In "Inventing the Cosmo Girl: Class Identity and Girl-Style American Dreams", Laurie Oullette best describes this when she says how Cosmo encourages “readers to make themselves over and even construct multiple selves, often to meet the demands and opportunities of prolonged courtship” (Ouellette 120). The goal for girls being: to eventually marry higher up along the social hierarchy.
Wood, J. T. (2011). Gendered lives: Communication, gender, and culture. (9th ed ed., pp. 1-227). Boston,MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
According to Human Sexuality in a World of Diversity 's gender role is a “learned role by observing behaviors of their parents, peers and media” (Rathus, Nevid, & Fichner-Rathus, 2014, p. 25). Research shows how gender roles in America have evolved and have changed over the last centuries, although there could be many reasons for this change I will examine some causes for the change in gender stereotypes. The following topics were studied during my research: Increased technology and access to internet, violence and explicit content in video games, movies and television shows resulting in gender stereotypes. In addition, the media can have a large influence on societies perception on how women and men are should look like which are sometimes
Sarwer, D. B., Grossbart, T. A., & Didie, E. R. (2003). Beauty and society. Seminars in
... market conditions for women for professional jobs can be extravagant due to many work related factors. Financial markets can become extremely volatile in certain times and women who have problem solving abilities can work just as efficient as men.
As meaning making creatures, humans attempt to categorize and definitively understand anything they observe. Although this crusade for understanding is not inherently bad, it often produces unintended negative consequences. As humans sort, classify, and define everything, they simultaneously place everything into a box that constricts creativity and fluidity. Concerning gender, these boxes create harmful conceptions of each person on the planet. Although these conceptions of gender are constructed and not “real” by any means, they have real implications in the process of socialization that influence how each person lives his/her life. In the United States, the commonly socialized “boxes” of gender have done a great
Dines, Gail, and Jean McMahon Humez. Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Text-reader. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995. Print.
Gender Roles and Stereotypes Explored in Judy Mann's The The Difference: Growing Up Female in America and Bernard Lefkowitz's Our Guys
In his article, “The Gender Gap at School,” David Brooks scrutinizes common gender roles and introduces the idea that biological factors may play a role in human development. He begins his essay by analyzing the three gender segregated sections in any airport, which include the restrooms, security pat-down areas, and the bookstore. He goes on to explain that the same separation occurs in the home. Brooks includes a study given to nine hundred men and women who were asked to name their favorite novel. The study determined that men preferred novels written by fellow men, whereas women favored books written woman.
Betsy Lucal, "What it means to be gendered me: Life on the Boundaries of a Dichotomous Gender System."
Seger, Linda. "Creating the Myth." Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. 4th ed. Ed. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003. 316-325.
In “The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over?” Deborah Blum states that “gender roles of our culture reflect an underlying biology” (Blum 679). Maasik and Solomon argue that gender codes and behavior “are not the result of some sort of natural or biological destiny, but are instead politically motivated cultural constructions,” (620) raising the question whether gender behavior begins in culture or genetics. Although one may argue that gender roles begin in either nature or nurture, many believe that both culture and biology have an influence on the behavior.
The Bro Code: How Contemporary Culture Creates Sexist Men. Dir. Thomas Keith. Media Education Foundation, 2011.
Society’s gender infrastructure has changed since the 1920’s and the nineteen amendment that allowed women the right to vote. Or so we thought, many of the gender expectations that were engraved into our early society still remain intact today. Women for many people still mean an immaterial, negligible, and frivolous part of our society. However, whatever the meaning of the word women one has, the same picture is always painted; that of a housewife, mother, and daughter. Women are expected to fallow the structural identity of living under her husband 's submissions. Threatening the social norm of what is accepted to be a woman in society can put in jeopardy the personal reputation of a woman, such treating her as a whore. But, what happens