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How does television affect childhood socialization
Tv as a form of socialisation
How does television affect childhood socialization
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Gender Stereotypes and The Real Housewives: What It Means for Male Viewers “Oh, no!” I thought to myself when she asked us to present our essay proposals to the class. A sinking feeling set in, and my heart began to race. I was about to share one of my deepest, darkest secrets. Each person went, and finally, it was my turn. My heart felt like it would burst as the words glided in slow motion across my lips: “Real Housewives.” The whole class started to laugh, and I wanted to shove the words back into my mouth, but I couldn’t. I just sat there and thought: “What have I just done?” As a male in society, there are certain habits and behaviors that I’m supposed to partake in and be happy with: mowing the yard, watching televised golf, drinking muscle milk, and playing video games with “my bros” with little-to-no dialogue because men bond better through activities than …show more content…
These manipulations and frames clearly outline the roles of men and women in society, which conflicts with the idea of male viewership. The role of stereotyping in The Real Housewives significantly contributes to societies dismissal of men who enjoy this so-called “Women’s TV”. By closely analyzing gender stereotypes in The Real Housewives, it is possible to see an implicit message that The Real Housewives is for women and women alone, because what man would willingly partake in such “feminine” behaviors? The media is a platform that has the ability to emphasize certain standards and stereotypical norms in society. More specifically, they can highlight gender roles in an attempt to place their characters within culturally dominant ideologies. The Real Housewives reinforces these dominant ideologies, which can have negative cultural repercussions for male audiences which I will elaborate on after analyzing these stereotypical feminine
Michael Abernathy’s article “Male Bashing on TV” uses many television sources and percentages to explain how men are treated like idiots inside of the media. Abernathy is a television reviewer, cultural critic, and queer culture commentator (350). While Heather Havrilesky's article “TV’s New Wave of Women:Smart, Strong, Borderline Insane” is the opposite and uses television sources to explain how women are treated as smart yet crazy inside of the media. These two articles describe how men and women are portrayed differently in television shows and the media. The articles have smaller subtopics in common which are the portrayal of men and women in the media, the comparison of men and women in each article, and how Abernathy and Havrilesky want
It is often said that the media and the arts are an accurate reflection of any given community. This is especially true in American pop-culture, where television shows depict the various stereotypes attributed to men and women and the roles they play in society. House, a highly popular medical drama that revolves around Dr. Gregory House and his diagnostic team, is a particularly good example as it represents the true state of the traditional gender roles in American culture today by, both, redefining and reinforcing them over the course of the show.
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
Esch, Madeleine. Shufeldt. Renovating Television, Remodeling Gender: Home Improvement Television and Gendered Domesticities, 1990-2005. n.p. ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing, 2009.
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.
On September 20, 1984 a show aired that changed the way we view gender roles on television. Television still perpetuates traditional gender stereotypes and in reflecting them TV reinforces them by presenting them as the norm (Chandler, 1). The Cosby Show, challenged the typical gender stereotyping of television, daring to go against the dominant social values of its time period. In its challenge of the dominant social view, the show redefined the portrayal of male and female roles in television. It redefined the gender role in the work place, in social expectations, and in household responsibilities. The Cosby Show supported Freidan in her view of “castigating the phony happy housewife heroine of the women’s magazines” (Douglas 136).
In American culture today, women continue the struggle of identifying what their roles in society are supposed to be. Our culture has been sending mixed messages to the modern day female, creating a sense of uneasiness to an already confusing and stressful world. Although women today are encouraged more than ever to be independent, educated, and successful, they are often times shamed for having done just that. Career driven females are frequently at risk of being labeled as bossy, unfeminine, or selfish for competing in many career paths that were once dominated by men. A popular medium in our culture such as television continues to have significant influences as to how people should aspire to live their lives. Viewers develop connections with relatable characters and to relationship dynamics displayed within their favorite shows. Fictional characters and relationships can ultimately influence a viewer’s fashion sense, social and political opinion, and attitude towards gender norms. Since the days of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeanie, where women were commonly portrayed as being the endearing mischievous housewife, television shows have evolved in order to reflect real life women who were becoming increasingly more independent, educated, and career oriented throughout the subsequent decades. New genres of television are introduced, such as the workplace comedy, where women are not only career oriented, but eventually transition into positions of power.
"For most of history, anonymous was a woman", quotes Virginia Woolf. (1) Throughout history, women’s lives were restricted to domesticity and family, and they were left oppressed and without political voice. Over the decades the roles of women have dramatically changed from chattels belonging to their husbands to gaining independence. Women became famous activists, thinkers, writers, and artists, like Frida Kahlo who was an important figure for women’s independence. The price women paid in their fight for equality was to die or be imprisoned along with men, and they were largely forgotten in written history. However, the roles they took on were wide-ranging which included working in factories, tending the troops, taking care of children and working at home. Frida Kahlo was a talented artist whose pride and self-determination has inspired feminists and many others. She was an important figure in the women’s movement not because she fought for women’s rights in an organized way, but because of the way she lived her life. “I suffered two grave accidents in my life. One in which a street car knocked me down, the other accident is Diego” (2), says Frida Kahlo. She was in a turbulent relationship with her husband Diego Rivera, but she claimed her independence from him. The experiences in her life shared with her nature and strength made her famous and well-known worldwide as a woman of independence, courage and nonconformity. Women like Frida Kahlo have fought for their independence and contrasting the modern-day women to the women in 1900s, we can see that their roles have changed and in return they received their independence. After centuries of conforming to female stereotypes, women are gradually taking control of their own image of...
Orange Is the New Black (2013-) is a web-series created by Jenji Kohan for Netflix. Based on the real-life experiences of Piper Kerman from her autobiography Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison (2010), the American comedy-drama (Wilson, 2014) follows Piper Chapman, played by Taylor Schilling, and her interaction with the women in Litchfield Penitentiary, a prison in upstate New York; a fictional version of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Orange Is the New Black “portrays characters in ways that perpetuate stereotypes and dominant ideologies” (Chavez, 2015) of gender, sexuality, race and the body. The show explores gender and sexuality in regards to identity, the hegemony of idyllic masculinity, femininity and its effect on the lives of the characters.
Girls are supposed to play with dolls, wear pink, and grow up to become princesses. Boys are suppose to play with cars, wear blue, and become firefighters and policemen. These are just some of the common gender stereotypes that children grow up to hear. Interactions with toys are one of the entryway to different aspects of cognitive development and socialism in early childhood. As children move through development they begin to develop different gender roles and gender stereotypes that are influenced by their peers and caregivers. (Chick, Heilman-Houser, & Hunter, 2002; Freeman, 2007; Leaper, 2000)
The “Bad girls club” has gained much success in rating, because of the negative aspects shown in women. Every Tuesday millions of watcher tune in to watch these women make a fool of their self, partying and getting intoxicated until losing control or black out. A woman who is a part of this show consider their self as a “bad”. The Bad Girls Club shows the stereotypes women deal with currently. Fight for no reason, making everything a competition, bring one another down and giving each other labels. For example: if two of the girls didn’t get along , they would try to get rid of them by fight each other, throw all their stuff out onto the street and putting their bed in the pool. Meanwhile, many reality shows continue the traditional race and gender based stereotypes. The “Bad girls club” is a product of this misleading format that supports profit-making and negative stereotypes under the appearance of reality television. If people use stereotypes to understand an issue, the decision they make in their life may have negative consequences for the group being stereotyped, whether people intend it or not. In this way, portrayals in the media might help perpetuate discrimination and negativity (Gorham
The work's topicality is characterized by the existence of the gender stereotypes in society, having generalization, and does not reflect individual differences in the human categories. Meanwhile, there is still discrimination on the labour market, human trafficking, sexual harassment, violence, women and men roles and their places in the family. Mass media offers us the reality, reduces the distance, but we still can see the negative aspects too. TV cultivates gender stereotypes, offering ideas about gender, relationships and ways for living. Such media ideas attach importance to many people in the society. Consequently, it is quite important identify gender stereotypes in the media, in order to prevent false views relating to gender stereotypes.
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.
Gender stereotyping has been ongoing throughout history. The media has been distorting views by representing gender unrealistically and inaccurately. It created an image of what "masculinity" or "femininity" should be like and this leads to the image being "naturalized" in a way (Gail and Humez 2014). The media also attempts to shape their viewers into something ‘desirable’ to the norm. This essay will focus on the negative impacts of gender-related media stereotypes by looking at the pressures the media sets on both women and men, and also considering the impacts on children.
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.