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Women media stereotypes
Gender roles in western culture
Women media stereotypes
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Since the beginning of recorded history, our world has put certain expectations and rules on female and males alike. Whether it be in the workplace, at home, or in society. There is a list of unwritten rules that every person should abide by if they want to fit in to their culture. For women in America, filling this quota is a lot harder than it seems. The Western woman is under the influence of unrealistic expectations regarding the media, this is true, but it is more complicated than that. Scholars have noticed a trend in the guidelines for women, from the stories in the bible to today’s modern media. The woman is to be a sexual being, a vixen, a wild child; while at the same time remaining reserved, submissive and pure. This phenomenon is called the Madonna/Whore complex. Madonna refers to the Virgin Mary, the epitome of chaste and respectable lady, and the whore refers to the side of the woman that is most like Eve, a temptress and dangerous seductress.
The most read and worshipped texts in the world are religious text, especially in the beginning of Western empires, where the bible was the rule book to etiquette in everyday life. Guidelines and laws were often based off of this sacred text. For much of civilization, churches and places of worship have had the most impact on society, contrary to today’s emphasis which focuses more on the entertainment industry. The scholarly article, “Women and The Church: Go Created Women in Her Own Image,” article agrees with this assumption and said, “Of all of the institutions which throughout the centuries have sanctioned and fostered the subjugation of women, the Roman Catholic Church can be charged with being the most influential and therefore the most damaging” ("Women And The Church:...
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...odies and their own choices.
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Conrad, Browyn Kara. "NEO-INSTITUTIONALISM, SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, AND THE CULTURAL REPRODUCTION OF A MENTALITÉ: Promise Keepers Reconstruct The Madonna/Whore Complex." vol. 47, no. 2 (May 2006), p. 305: Web. 7 Apr. 2014.
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In the beginning of Holy Feast and Holy Fast, Bynum provides background information on the history of women in religion during the Middle Ages, highlighting the different statuses of men and women in society during that time. It is important to understand the culture of the Middle Ages and the stereotypes surrounding men and women to appreciate Bynum’s connection between status, accessibility, and piety. As an example, Bynum mentions that there appear to be basic differences between even the lives of holy women and the lives of holy men, which was because “women lacked control over their wealth and marital status” (Bynum p. 25). Men are clearly construed here as having more power in their daily lives than women—this is a simple, but major, distinction between the two genders which provides reasoning towards their divergence in practices. Women’s s...
Long, Thomas L. "Julian of Norwich's "Christ as Mother" and Medieval Constructions of Gender" The Madison Conference on English Studies, James Madison University., Mar 18, 1995.
It is undeniably true that an equality of the sexes exists today that was not even imagined in the medieval era. However, this rise in respect for women does not guarantee that all of the prejudices and stereotypes from preceding centuries have fallen by the wayside; on the contrary, most of the same archetypes are alive and well, even if modified to suit a new world. From the unattainably perfect virgin to the sexually insatiable temptress, these images appear throughout modern culture-but the disturbing nature of their existence is made far worse by the complacency with which women accept and further them. In many places, control of the image of women has passed into their own hands, yet broad generalizations and negative suggestions continue to fill daily life.
Looking back through many historical time periods, people are able to observe the fact that women were generally discriminated against and oppressed in almost any society. However, these periods also came with women that defied the stereotype of their sex. They spoke out against this discrimination with a great amount of intelligence and strength with almost no fear of the harsh consequences that could be laid out by the men of their time. During the Medieval era, religion played a major role in the shaping of this pessimistic viewpoint about women. The common belief of the patriarchal-based society was that women were direct descendants of Eve from The Bible; therefore, they were responsible for the fall of mankind. All of Eve’s characteristics from the biblical story were believed to be the same traits of medieval women. Of course, this did not come without argument. Two medieval women worked to defy the female stereotype, the first being the fictional character called The Wife of Bath from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The second woman, named Margery Kempe, was a real human being with the first English autobiography written about her called The Book of Margery Kempe. In these two texts, The Wife of Bath and Margery Kempe choose to act uniquely compared to other Christians in the medieval time period because of the way religion is interpreted by them. As a result, the women view themselves as having power and qualities that normal women of their society did not.
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...m played a role in ending practices such as human sacrifice, slavery, infanticide and adultery. Christianity in general affected the status of women by condemning infanticide, divorce, incest, polygamy, birth control, abortion and marital infidelity. While official Church teaching considers women and men to be equal and different, some modern activists of ordination of women and other feminists argue that the teachings by St. Paul, the Fathers of the Church and Scholastic theologians advanced the impression of a pleasingly ordained female subordination. Nevertheless, women have played prominent roles in Western history through the Catholic Church, particularly in education and healthcare, but also as influential theologians and mystics. The important status of the Virgin Mary gave views of maternal virtue and compassion a place at the heart of Western civilization.
Vives, Juan Luis, and Charles Fantazzi. The education of a Christian woman a sixteenth-century manual. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Print.
King, Karen L. The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle. Santa Rosa, California: Polebridge Press, 2003.
Today, women share the same equal rights and opportunities as men; nevertheless, that has not invariably been the case. Before the Jazz Age era, gender discrimination between men and women in society was considerably popular. Women were seen as inferior to men. Their jobs were to care for the home, children, and other domesticated duties while men were able to work, get an education, and become doctors or lawyers. Many women like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ida B. Wells, Sojourner Truth, Zora Hurston, to mention a few, seen the unfairness in women's rights and fought for equal rights for women through different movements, efforts, protests, and even marches to abolish women’s rights. As a consequence, women now pursue not only higher education and higher paid jobs/ businesses, but their rights. One of the world’s most controversial issues among churches of today is the role of a woman. Many people are confused about the duty of a woman and how she is supposed to serve God because of history. History taught us to never deny someone of gender, race, or even diversity since he or she has human rights. However, this issue should not be viewed as men versus women because this is not a political issue; instead, it should be viewed as the structural of a church. Women should not be priests, pastors, or even rabbis for God condone women for being priests, pastors, and rabbis as well as proscribed.
Religion is powerful in that it controls followers’ behaviours and beliefs throughout their entire lives; it is a form of social control. Catholicism is one of the most widely known religions influencing more than 2 billion people around the world (Ross). Within Catholicism not everyone are seen as equals; men have greater privilege than women. The bible and church are from a male’s point of view (Christ 86) and passages within the bible are used to enforce a sexual hierarchy. In fact, the oppression of women begins with the first story in Genesis about creation, which portrays females as being inferior to men and even of an evil nature. This one passage is the main source of justification of oppression of woman in the church (Daly 13). The church and its teachings instil low self-esteem and low self-worth in women; it creates false identities that are supposed to be God’s plan (Daly 3). One has to wonder why women participate in the church and follow its teachings, and how women can overcome the oppression in the church.
Hughes, John. The Breakfast Club. Film. Directed by John Hughes. 1985. LA: Universal Studios, 2008. DVD.
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