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gender representation in the media
media and gender stereotypes introduction
gender representation in the media
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Males are stereotyped in movies, books, magazines, television, almost any type or medium with a male figure exhibit some type of male stereotyping. The most common male stereotypes in the media are often very well known and referred to as normal traits that men are suppose to posses, and these male traits are the following: man are naturally stronger than the opposite sex, men are the family providers, bread-winners , men are tough, adventurous, brave, protectors, and most importantly a men must be able to shoot guns, jump off cliffs, ride motorcycles, and must be able to save the damsel in distress. While I have some idea of how men are stereotyped, my main focus here will be on how men are stereotyped within the media.
After reading an article by Dave Barry entitled, “Guys vs. Men,” which is an article that is about, well, guys and men and how much they differ from one another. While reading through the article I found that Barry provided quite a few male stereotypes, which was what his entire article was about. “Guys Like Neat Stuff, Guys Like Really Pointless Challenges, Guys Lack a Rigid and Well-Defined Moral Code, and Guys are Not Great Communicators,” were the titles of his four short stories about how guys differ from men, and within these four short stories is where my curiosity for stereotypes arose.
So after reading the Barry article I began to do some research on stereotype, and found a few interesting websites which lead me further into the world of stereotyping. As I did my search and read through some of the results I began to wonder why people stereotyped other people, which naturally led me to change my initial main topic and search for reasons to explain why people stereotype each other. Looking up why peo...
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...s; 4th edition. Eds. Andrea A. Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003. 403-413
Children Now. “Boys To Men: Media Messages About Masculinity.” BoysToMen. 1999. http://www.mediate.com/articles/children.cfm.(20 April 2006).
Margaret W. Matlin. “Bimbos and Rambos: The Cognitive Basis of Gender Stereotypes.” http://www.psichi.org/pubs/articles/article_112.asp. 1999. (20 April. 2006).
Media Awareness Network. “Common Stereotypes of Men in Media.” 2006. http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/men_and_masculinity/masculinity_stereotypes.cfm.(17 April 2006).
Myra Junyk. “YOUTH: Media Models Say Muscles Make Men” 1989. http://www.medialit.org/readings_room/aritcle436.html.(20 April 2006)
Wikipedia. “Stereotype.” 1 May 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype#Stereotypes_of_groups_by_other_groups. (20 April 2006).
Brannon, Linda. "Chapter 7 Gender Stereotypes: Masculinity and Femininity." Gender: Psychological Perspectives. 4th ed. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon, 2005. 159-83. Print.
Stephen Bonnycastle in his criticism, In Search of Authority, explains stereotypes as, "The system (sometimes known as “the patriarchal order”) that causes the majority of men and women to take on these different roles ... hidden, like the rules of grammar in a language."(10). When a stereotype is introduced into a situation for a extended period of time, it is psychologically proven that it will become an expectation. Stereotypes prove to act as an obscuring lens into which most people view the world. When a person is unaware of a culture, race, gender they mainly use the stereotypes to judge them against. Stereotypes are not just a generalization of a group of people, "stereotypes warrant a closer analysis, because they powerfully shape the reality of gender differences..."(Brody 396). The effects of stereotypes go deeper than just male and female, race against race, "everyone is vulnerable to stereotype threat, at least in some circumstances"(reducingstereotypethreat.org). Stereotypes overall cause negative side effects, some fatal. These side effects are psychological as well as physical. People who
Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom and Louise Z. Smith. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2011. 494-507. Print.
Women belong in the kitchen, and men only care about sex. These are examples of stereotypes of men and women that people continue to joke around about. According to the 5th Edition of Child Development by Berk, L., some personality traits regarded as stereotypical for men are active, aggressive, competitive, dominant, superior, self-confident and independent. Women are stereotypically considerate, emotional, gentle, kind, passive, and home-oriented. They also like children and always devote themselves to others. When people first read the list, some are probably thinking, “This is so accurate, what’s wrong with it?” However, these people don’t realize that yes, a man can be dominant and a woman can be passive, but it is also possible for it to be the other way around. A man can be as home-oriented as any woman, and a woman can be as independent as any man.
If a person was asked what he or she thought males and females are like, what would he or she answer? There was such a survey done, and the list for females was as follows: “compassionate, loves children, dependent, interpersonally sensitive, nurturing,” while the list for males was “leader, aggressive, ambitious, analytical, competitive, dominant, independent, and individualistic” (Fine 3-4). By this standard, all women are interpersonally sensitive, and all men are aggressive. Is this true? In some cases these generalizations may be true, but in many others this is far from the truth, making these lists gender stereotypes. Gender stereotypes can be found in many places including magazines, television shows, real life, and movies. Movies in general are overflowing with an innumerable amount of stereotypes. Just One of the Guys, in particular, is a movie that focuses on gender stereotypes. In the movie, the main character, Terry Griffith, reinforces “all [of] the clichés” surrounding both male and female genders while she is learning to be a boy, changing between the two genders, and demonstrating her actions and interactions as a boy (Denby 543).
There are often many stereotypes in a society. The most common are the stereotypes that compare women and men. For example, women are thought of to cook, clean, and take care of the children in a family. On the contrary, men are supposedly the working, dominant, money-makers within a household. In a reflection titled “Guys vs. Men,” humorist, Dave Barry, strays away from those stereotypes, not completely, but to instead compare the stereotypes of “guys” and the stereotypes of “men.” Barry’s purpose is to prove that people think of men to have more of a serious, mature, and responsible nature. On the other hand, guys have a more playful nature and a less serious side to them, which shows that they are young at heart. He addresses the stereotype in a humorous tone, as well as strategically formatting it with multiple comparisons, in order to keep the atmosphere light and friendly
Edition. 6th ed. Eds. Robert P. Yagelski and Robert K. Miller. Boston, MA: Thompson/ Wadsworth, 2004. 309. Print
Throughout history when we think about women in society we think of small and thin. Today's current portrayal of women stereotypes the feminine sex as being everything that most women are not. Because of this depiction, the mentality of women today is to be thin and to look a certain way. There are many challenges with women wanting to be a certain size. They go through physical and mental problems to try and overcome what they are not happy with. In the world, there are people who tell us what size we should be and if we are not that size we are not even worth anything. Because of the way women have been stereotyped in the media, there has been some controversial issues raised regarding the way the world views women. These issues are important because they affect the way we see ourselvescontributing in a negative way to how positive or negative our self image is.
Often time men are viewed as strong, dominant, smart, brave, and ambitious. Women are often viewed as passive, weak, nurturing, soft, and meek. In society, the fact that men possess more of the more valuable traits is why in many cultures they are idealized, worshipped, and/or praised the way they are. Studies suggest that gender stereotypes tended to be higher in regions that were highly conservative, had Christian affiliations, and a small percentage of women in Universities. Counties with a high level of masculinity were China, Austria, and Italy. The following countries have a low margin between male and female roles and a low level of masculinity: The Americas, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway,
Throughout society, men and women have been expected to live by guidelines consisting of media generated ideas and ways of living out life. Both men and women’s thinking process are being altered the negative effects of society’s mass media. For both sexes, this repeating negative exposure causes a constant downfall in self-image and creates media influenced decisions that lead to unhealthy lifestyles. The media effects the thinking process of both men and women in negative ways therefore media needs to be heavily regulated.
The media, through its many outlets, has a lasting effect on the values and social structure evident in modern day society. Television, in particular, has the ability to influence the social structure of society with its subjective content. As Dwight E. Brooks and Lisa P. Hébert write in their article, “GENDER, RACE, AND MEDIA REPRESENTATION”, the basis of our accepted social identities is heavily controlled by the media we consume. One of the social identities that is heavily influenced is gender: Brooks and Hébert conclude, “While sex differences are rooted in biology, how we come to understand and perform gender is based on culture” (Brooks, Hébert 297). With gender being shaped so profusely by our culture, it is important to be aware of how social identities, such as gender, are being constructed in the media.
First we need to examine the cases where this is present. Less obvious stereotypes are those of women. Women?s roles in society have changed throughout the times. Are the...
Everybody is born and made differently, but one thing is similar, our gender. We are born either male or female, and in society everybody judges us for our gender. This is called gender roles; societies expecting you to act like a male or female (Rathus, 2010). Some people say, “act like a lady,” or “be a man,” these are examples of how gender roles work in our everyday lives. In society when we think stereotypes, what do we think? Many think of jocks, nerds, or popular kids; gender stereotyping is very similar. Gender stereotypes are thoughts of what the gender is supposed to behave like (Rathus, 2010). One example of a gender stereotype for a man would be a worker for the family, and a women stereotype would be a stay at home mom. Though in todays age we don’t see this as much, but it is still around us. In different situations both gender roles and stereotypes are said and done on a daily basis and we can’t avoid them because everyone is different.
Another masculine characteristic is to be athletic, have economic success power and possession. Women are seen as objects and not humans. How women are human too and they should be treated the same way as men do. Just because women have different features than they do doesn 't mean they aren 't capable of the same things. You can also see this in the media they go along with the generalization that Society has placed rolls upon women and men. Media has a major effect on how we portray men and women. Our generation is persuaded by media. If a boy or girl acting a certain they want to copy their action. Whatever they see their gender the most common to enforce that it what they can see to the norms for their
The differences between women and men are not solely biological. Our society’s culture has established a set of unwritten cultural laws of how each gender should act, or in other words society has ascribed a stereotype. Men’s gender identity has been one of masculinity, and masculinity is defined as referring to a man or things described as manly. What does manly mean though? Is a male manly if he is “Mr. Fix-it”, or the jock, or if he sits on the couch on Sunday watching football? This latter statement is a stereotype of men, that has been around for decades, and is current as well, but starting with the 1960’s a man’s role started to change, despite the stereotype not changing to accommodate it. For the past 40 years one can see how men have taken on roles stereotypically ascribed to women, such roles including being the “stay-at-home mom”, which we can find an excellent example of in the 1980’s film “Mr.