Portrayal of Women in the Media
Gender is the psychological characteristics and social categories that are created by human culture. Doing gender is the concept that humans express their gender when they interact with one another. Messages about how a male or female is supposed to act come from many different places. Schools, parents, and friends can influence a person. Another major factor that influences millions of impressionable females and males is television. Not only does the television teach each sex how to act, it also shows how one sex should expect the other sex to act. In the current television broadcasting, stereotypical behavior goes from programming for the very small to adult audiences. In this broadcasting range, females are portrayed as motherly, passive and innocent, sex objects, or they are overlooked completely or seen as unimportant entities.
Stereotyping women is not only rampant in the adult world; it also flourishes in the kiddie universe as well. Here, there are depictions of women and girls as motherly or innocent, silly, and passive. This occurs not only in popular programming on Public Broadcasting, but also on television in other countries. Mothering images on Philippine TV has shown some of the same trends that is seen in the United States. Although “Teletubbies and Barney & Friends display an equal representation in number, each show displays gender stereotyped qualities,” it is obvious that these programs are sometimes reinforcing the wrong ideas about gender roles to children, roles that feminists have been battling for almost half a century. “Both programs demonstrated clear gendered roles with males being more active and females being more social and passive. This distinction appeared most obviously in the real-life segments of both programs with women as mother or passive viewer of action. Neither program shows women or men in non-stereotypical roles, indicating at an early age children are exposed to gender-specific occupational expectations.” Each show has children as additional characters, and each episode consists of a live action activity.
In Barney & Friends, Barney interacts with two female sidekicks. Baby Bop is “a silly, excitable, and giddy [dinosaur] carrying a blankey, wearing a bow—a stereotypical little girl”. She plays dress-up, sings, and plays pretend where she might be a ballerina or...
... middle of paper ...
...get less attention than male’s. “On boys’ favorite TV shows, male characters are frequently portrayed at work, while the occupations of nearly half of female characters are unidentified.” This is damaging because boys will begin to think that either women are lazy and can’t find work, or their work is not important enough to be seen as something to regard.
The media and television broadcasting of women is not all negative. But current culture is constantly taking the easy way out. It refuses to explore different ways in which women can be represented. That is why for years to come women will still be seen as motherly, passive and innocent, sex objects, or they are overlooked or seen as unimportant entities. Whether it’s motherly birds on kids TV shows or scantily clad dancers on Monday Night Football, the portrayal of women has yet to catch up with what real life women are like. There are single women, obese women, and smart women. Women who are single mom’s, lesbians, or don’t have any children at all. Women are able to do the same type of work as men without being manly. The day that women are treated as equals on television will whole new level of success for feminism.
Gender Roles. A hot button topic that has become a topic of conversation for years now. When we think of Gender roles what things come to mind? With Men we often think of qualities such as strength, toughness, bravery, and masculinity and being a Husband. With Women we often think of characteristics such as: care taker, Wife, nurturing, cooking/ cleaning, and often very supportive. But another big question that we should be asking ourselves is where and how these gender roles and stereotypes have come from? And for the answer to that question we should look to our media consumption. For years now TV shows and Movies have truly shaped what gender roles should be in our society. These ideas are planted in our minds even at a young age, whether
In her blog Bolick (2011) stated that “I grew up watching both I love Lucy and The Honeymooners and even as a child I always wondered why the wives on these shows didn’t have to work.” Women in television shows decades ago mirrored the roles women played in society. Yet, women in society, although they have made major progressions towards equality they are still portrayed as the housewife. For the first time, America has a woman running for President of the United States. But parents think that children do not have suitable role models because of what they see on television. Does that fault fall on producers of television shows and movies? Or on the parent for allowing the children to watch those shows? Children look up to people in their immediate presence the most, imitating what they see and are accustomed to the most. With the changes in of roles in television, however, society is still noticing the unimportant things. During a recent study conducted by “The Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film” Lauzen (2016) stated that “Moviegoers were more likely to know the occupation of male characters than female characters…… In addition, moviegoers were much more likely to see male characters at work and actually working than female characters.” What this shows is that people have become so accustomed to the way society ‘used to be’ that they pay attention to the details
I have decided to examine gender role expectations and inequality in modern media and see how and if expectations and norms have changed over the years. I have studied three modern day teen comedy movies and found examples of many things including gender stereotypes, gender role socialization, gender inequality, and heteronormativity. Each movie contained examples of each and I have analyzed them by describing how each example shows what I interpreted it as.
women in powerful positions on television. If girls are not able to see themselves in such
In their pieces on the Smurfette principle, Pollitt and Ellis both discuss the idea that gender representations have intense effects on the children who absorb certain types of popular entertainment. Although we are hesitant to accept it, we are all influenced by the media in a very powerful way. Whether it be through TV shows, billboards, movies or the news. One thing that we commonly wonder about is if the adult female population is as influenced by the stereotyped gender roles present on TV or are we shaped at a young age and carry that perspective with us throughout our lives. This Smurfette principle has been around for almost two decades. It was introduced by Katha Pollitt and is unfortunately still present in our current 21st century.
“People learn more from media than any other single source of information” (Missrepresentation). This quote exemplifies how society learns and creates their standards about people, places, and things. All sources and mediums of media impact billions of lives every day. The media holds this power over society and it’s time to change that; especially when it comes to the media’s view of women. Women are constantly being misrepresented. This misrepresentation of women in the media is negatively impacting America by corrupting both the youth and adults. This is occurring because of the hyper-sexualization of women, wrongly portraying women in leadership positions, and creating stereotypes of women in movies and television.
On a daily basis people are exposed to some sort of misrepresentation of gender; in the things individuals watch, and often the things that are purchased. Women are often the main target of this misrepresentation. “Women still experience actual prejudice and discrimination in terms of unequal treatment, unequal pay, and unequal value in real life, then so too do these themes continue to occur in media portraits.”(Byerly, Carolyn, Ross 35) The media has become so perverted, in especially the way it represents women, that a females can be handled and controlled by men, the individual man may not personally feel this way, but that is how men are characterized in American media. Some may say it doesn’t matter because media isn’t real life, but people are influenced by everything around them, surroundings that are part of daily routine start to change an individual’s perspective.
Men do not have the benefits of equality either, they are also limited by societal expectations and having to fulfill the requirements of what it means to “be a man”. Gender roles shape the fabric of our society. In the documentary Tough Guise, Katz chronicles the socialization of boys from the moment they are born and as they grow up. Tough guise explains how the entertainment industry feeds messages about masculinity which exclude basic human qualities such as compassion, and vulnerability. These are portrayed as feminine with a negative connotation implied (Earp, Katz, Young and Rabinovitz 2013). In American modern culture children of both sexes are consuming large amounts of media on a daily basis. The documentary MissRepresentation explores the media’s role in the shaping of our society; specifically the media’s treatment of women. When it comes to girls and women, marketers have made substantial profits from objectifying women and setting an unattainable standard of what it means to be beautiful. Hyper-feminized women are all over the covers of magazines, hypersexualized in advertisements, and in movies. Women have to walk a very thin tightrope and the expectations for a good woman are contradicting (Newsom, Scully, Dreyfous, Redlich, Congdon, and Holland
In modern society, stereotyping others is a common action that most people do to show what they know about a specific group. To stereotype an individual demonstrates the society’s lack of knowledge. Stereotyping within the society is closely related to an individual’s gender and the traditional roles that comes with the gender. Although the traditional roles were never verified as the proper roles, they continue to play a part within the modern society. Nevertheless, stereotyping gender roles should be reduce as it inflicts harm to people’s self-esteem and their individuality. In order to reduce stereotyping gender roles, the society should allowed better understanding of gender in child’s development, encouraging women into joining men-like
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.
One thousand years go by and an abundant amount of people still view women in a stereotypical type of way. On the opposing view, if women did not overstretch the slightest of things, this wouldn’t be such an enormous issue. Women may be overreacting to what the media has to say about them. It is not affecting everybody but a vast majority of successful women from continuing to moving forward said Marianne Schnall. Important to realize, women are capable of doing jobs men can do. Such jobs as being an engineer, physician, mechanic, lawyer and even top notch business women! Up to the present time there is an ongoing public debate on women suffering from double standards. If it makes a female feel threatened or belittled than it may be sexist. A very interesting article this came to be because the writer had numerous accountants to keep her argument steady. A worthy writer brings up present time activities, statistics, and people being affected by the scenario and provides the reader some closure. With a devastatingly crucial issue such as women being shunned by the media, it’s not okay to have the ideas of other people in your work. In the article, “Controversial Hillary Cover of Time Illuminates Sexism in the Media” by Marianne Schnall, implies that the media is negatively affecting the chances of women becoming successful with all the sexism it is portraying. Marianne Schnall is a published writer and professional interviewer with many influential credentials that she in not afraid to use.
Toys, literature, media, and films also encourage sex roles. Males are depicted as "doing", while females are always "receiving." In this paper, 5 articles focusing on sex roles were used. The articles look at the damaging effects of sex role stereotyping, and some ways the sex roles are accentuated in the schools.
The Representation of Men and Women in the Media Men and women are both represented differently in the media these days. Then the sand was sunk. Ironically it was even represented differently in the title of this essay. Men came before women! I am writing an essay to explain how men and women are represented in the media.
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.
Socialization of people has been occurring through family, public education and peer groups. However in recent years, the mass-media has become the biggest contributor to the socialization process, especially in the ‘gender’ sector. The mass-media culture, as influential as it has become, plays the most significant role in the reproduction process of gender role stereotypes and patriarchal values. It is true that a family model of nowadays is based rather on equality than on patriarchal values and women have more rights and possibilities on the labor market. However, mass-media still reflect, maintain, or even ‘create’ gender stereotypes in order to promote themselves.