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Essays on portrayals of women in media
Negative effect of gender roles and stereotypes
Essays on portrayals of women in media
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Growing up and transitioning from girl to woman is harder than it looks, and often goes unrecognized. From the basic small things like dealing with boys and high school to the human body girls don’t get the credit they deserve because they have it harder.
It’s quite common that girls will have a breakdown more than guys. Studies show girls are more emotional where guys like to believe they’re tough and, although only 16 or 17 years old that they’re already men, not by the Canadian Government, but in their own mind. Often you hear girls talking about situations that happened last night or over the weekend and most time girls deal with things differently from one another. Studies show girls mentally deal with things differently. Females don’t like to be looked at as weaker or depicted of their strengths but scientists prove that if you ask a boy and girl the same question about the opposite sex, their reactions will be different, sometimes completely opposite, not only because they’re different people but because women and men have different minds and each of them handle things very different from each other. Not in all cases but if you ask one girl and one boy what they would do if their boyfriend/girlfriend cheated on them answers would obviously vary, but what the answers are and how they are delivered is important too. You’ll see, guys react more with anger when they’re upset and girls respond emotionally, girls turn to crying and sometimes eating candy and ice cream, and guys turn to yelling or being verbally and/or physically aggressive.
You don’t walk around high school hearing boy drama as much as you do about girls’, it’s a well known fact. Whether it’s about what you ate last night, what you watched or what happened at...
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...se men to drop to their knees and “cry like a little girl”. Girls and boys will often do the same thing, but when girls do it society defines them as “sluts” or “whores” for being as open or as sexually active as a man. When girls are looked at for secondary roles and jokes are made about them in primary situations, just how guys are joked about for being nurses and not doctors, or more you find stay at home moms than you do dads.
Society makes being a girl harder than it should be. Growing up and transitioning from girl to woman is harder than it looks, and often goes unrecognized. From the basic small things like dealing with boys and high school to the human body girls don’t get the credit they deserve because they have it harder. Dealing with all the social issues, science and knowledge and how the world works, girls deal with growing up and growing old harder.
Girls were only supposed to be cute for boys, they were meant to be quiet and not react to when they found out that their boyfriends were actually cheating on them. Boys took pride to have two girlfriends or even cheat on their girlfriends, it raised their egos when they were with their friends, and they didn’t care about how the girl was scarred and scared to find another boyfriend. Yet, when a girl cheated on a boy, and broke his heat, she was a slut and a whore. She was demonized for “having fun” in a boy’s case, for expressing her sexuality and enjoying herself her reputation and name was trashed and none of the boys cared if it hurt her in any way. All throughout high school I witnessed this pattern, I heard and watched boys howl and cat call girls, insult their looks, and destroy their self-confidence for nothing. When they were the ones who were ugly, even if they weren’t they were ugly on the inside and to them being ugly themselves isn’t the problem. Men worry more about if their dates are ugly and if their girlfriends are fat, when women only care about is if this man will hurt them in any way. Smiler states this perfectly, when she talks about the double standard of both genders being manipulative. She talks about women being manipulative in a way of pleasing, while men are manipulative in a way that tells they only what their next lay. Women are supposed to be prudish but
...is morally degrading and perpetuates the idea that women are mere sexual objects,” (BBC News.) This shows the awful things they go through in order to get what they truly
I was assigned to the female sex category at birth and raised as a girl; the very fact that I can state that simple statement and people can get a fairly clear idea how I was raised shows just how intertwined we are with the social construction of gender. Women can relate because they were probably raised in a similar fashion, and men know that they were raised differently than I was. This is one of the many ways our society supports Lorber’s claim that gender translates to a difference among the binary American society operates on (Lorber, pp. 47-48). My parents kept my hair long until I decided to donate it when I was 12 years old, my ears were pierced when I was 8 years old, and
...ve begins generating rumors for male peers who do not qualify as a stereotypical male. For instance, Olive pretends to have sex with a male peer during a popular house party (Gluck, 2010). This imaginary hook-up benefits the male peer’s bullying dilemma. Again, gender policing occurs between men when masculinity is questioned (Kimmel, 2008). “One survey found that most Americans boys would be rather be punched in the face than called gay” (Kimmel, 2000, p.77). The gender police govern Olive’s and the male peer’s status in social standings. America’s obsession with sex disregards if a girl truly sleeps around.
Females are dehumanized and looked upon as sexual objects because their value is measured in sexual terms; thus creating the concept of a slut.
In today’s society, it can be argued that the choice of being male or female is up to others more than you. A child’s appearance, beliefs and emotions are controlled until they have completely understood what they were “born to be.” In the article Learning to Be Gendered, Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell- Ginet speaks out on how we are influenced to differentiate ourselves through gender. It starts with our parents, creating our appearances, names and behaviors and distinguishing them into a male or female thing. Eventually, we grow to continue this action on our own by watching our peers. From personal experience, a child cannot freely choose the gender that suits them best unless our society approves.
Society places males in one category and females in another category, although some say it could be detrimental to one if they are not sure what role to identify with or how to be accepted. An article stated by Sara Reese, “Making kids to stick to gender roles can actually be harmful to their health. States a researcher did a study that observed fourteen years old interactions over a three month period. “Usually we think of gender as a natural and biological, but it’s not... we actually construct it in ways that have problems and largely acknowledge health risks.” Several things Pereia found were aspects of what one would consider bullying today. For example, she observed girls who loved to play sports sometimes avoided them all together because it would be “the famine thing to do” Pereia said, “All of the girls were within very healthy weights, but they were all striking their intake of food in some way, so what we 're really talking about is fourteen year old girls who’s bodies are changing and developing, depriving themselves at every meal.” They boys in the study felt they had to prove themselves in some form or fashion. Pereia stated, “All faced intense pressure to demonstrate the extent of their manliness”. Today’s studies give one another a difficult time or poke fun for the smallest thing. Bullying is more prevalent today because of how society’s outlook. Girls and boys both struggle in middle school with their changing in their bodies. Their hormones change and they are changing into adolescents. Never the less the metamorphic change of their bodies is one thing, but being accepted is another aspect to take into
Men were taught to be superior to women since the dawn of time, whereas females were looked down upon. Ruled by patriarchy, it was hard for most of these women to do more than just be a stay at home wife. In some of the stories we have read, the women were portrayed as submissive, obedient, with no voice. Women have struggled to break out of this mold and find a voice for themselves. However, some managed to break out of these expectations and standards. Women and men have had to fulfill different set standards before anyone had stepped foot outside the womb. For both genders those standards came with different expectations.
In our current culture, there is a huge difference between what is considered to be for girls or boys. From birth, children are told what colors and styles of clothing they wear, what toys they should play with, and how they should act. Often, girls are told they cannot play with toys considered to be for boys and boys are told they are not allowed to play with toys considered to be for girls. Children who do decide they want to play with the toys not traditionally for their gender are often scolded by family members, pushing the children back to their gender-specific toys. Gender socialization starts at birth and continues from adolescence, to adulthood, causing specific and detrimental differences
Gender differences are best understood as a process of socialization, to organize the roles each individual have to fulfil in society. From parents to teachers, religions, media, and peers; we observe and make sense of the behaviors exhibited by the people around us since young. We imitate and construct our own understanding of how to be of a particular gender, and of how to position ourselves. Parents socialize their children based on their biological sex, and this process starts as soon as the sex of the baby is known. Gender is hence socially constructed.
Gender roles are unavoidable at any stage of your life. They are taught to you by parents, conveyed in the media, practiced and honored in organizations and supported by our government. No matter how many feminist groups attempt to bring the two sets of gender roles for males and females together, there will always be the unwritten expectations that males and females are taught. Boys will always play with guns and girls will always play with dolls. As long as this occurs, the ambitions for boys and girls will be directly related to the stereotypical form we are taught. It is up to the families, media and peers to use the gender roles appropriately.
It is as simple as a little girl who wants to play football and dress boyish, or a boy who wants to do ballet and wear nail polish. These children may not feel like the other gender yet they still express traits that do not fit their role. Today this is hardly shocking as parents are allowing for children to express themselves in ways they choose. This blending of gender roles has allowed us to see that you cannot place a gender on a job, a color, a toy, or a
Socially constructed gender roles have a large impact on the society that we are bred in. Boys and girls are told from a young age what is considered normal for each of them based on what sex they were assigned. Girls are immediately told to be shy but not rude, love the color pink, and clean and cook in preparation of the man they are inevitably going to marry. Boys are told to ‘be men’ and never cry in the presence of anyone, emotions are for girls and anything less would be seen as merely weak. Parents usually prescribe their own upbringings to how their children should be brought up; girls are constantly reminded to watch how they come off to people. Girls must clean and cook, but never show frustration, smile even if she’s scared of unfamiliar
The social construction of gender leads to the creation and sustainment of sex roles that we have been taught to adhere to since birth that results to social doings through the creation of gender – who we talk, how we dress and who we associate with. Men are taught to masculine qualities like not crying and women are taught to do feminine characteristics like playing with dolls and wearing dresses. A prime example of this is in the article written my Diane Reay, that analyzes the construction female behavior, where those who identified as “girlies” care about their appearance and we regarded to as stupid by their classmates. Those who challenged the feminine norms, where referred to as “spice girls” and labeled as bitches or little cows by their teachers because they where thought to be negative influences to the rest of the class. Reay states that, “boys maintain the hierarchy of social superiority of masculinity by devaluing the female world,” (Reay, 2014, pg. 257) by esteeming males over females, it creates gendered expressions that depict once gender more promising that the other in society, where self-declared tomboy Jodie stated that, “Girls can be good, bad or- best of all – they can be boys,” (Reay, 2014, pg. 257) which solidifies the social norm of males being better than
We may be personally responsible for our own misconceptions of gender and masculinity. Our actions about these topics speak louder than words. Sociologist, Ann Oakley argues that parents often mold their children around certain behaviors, with positive and negative consequences, to adhere to the standards that are socially acceptable. Oddly there is a strong back lash to this sort of treatment in females. In a study done conducted by Michael Messner, when asked who was a tomboy and who was a sissy as children, women raised their hands more often to identify with the tomboy image. The tomboy trait celebrates masculinity and restricts femininity. Often children explore many traits about themselves, as Allen explained to Pascoe, “When you’re younger…you’re a kid. You are wide open…You just do what you want” (Pascoe 118). Darnell, a football player, stated “Since you were little boys you’ve been told, ‘hey don’t be a little faggot’” (p 55). Darnell showcasing that males are conditioned very early like females about their roles of masculinity. These children are taught about how masculinity works. In the school Pascoe researched, a faculty member, Mr. Ford, reminded males students through his reply to a backhanded comment made to him from another student that men should engage in sexual actives with women, not men. Another...