Gendered Media

Has the stereotypical perception of gender in the media changed? In fact media takes advantage of the idyllic image of males and females to misguide society’s perspective of what they should be. Julia T. Wood explores the idea of media promoting misconception of the sexes in her article, "Gendered Media: The Influence of Media on Views of Gender." She argues that the portrayal and images of males and females in the media is impractical and cliched, and reinforce negative and sexist stereotypes about men and women in society. A classic example of some of these stereotypes can be seen in the recent Disney blockbuster Maleficent, a movie about a young, beautiful soft hearted fairy named Maleficent. She lived an adventurous and beautiful life in an enchanted forest kingdom, when a trespassing army threatens to harm the land. Maleficent then

Unfortunately she 's betrayed by a old companion that turns her love into hatred and vengeance. She commissions an epic crusade with the king 's heir and puts a curse on his newborn daughter. Only to realize that Aurora is the one to bring reconciliation back to the kingdom. While the recent movie Maleficent tries to be more realistic in its portrayal of gender roles there are still parts that show that images of sexism, the victimization of women and the stereotypical roles of the two genders are still dominant in the media like Wood’s writes about in her article.

Wood begins her article by discussing how women are underrepresented in media. She points out the statistics show that the media always portray men a lot more than women in sitcoms as well as the news, three times more during prime time alone. Even behind the scenes are there are far more male coordinators than female. This common underrepresentation creates the perception that there are more men than women and establishes male dominance as the norm .After discussing the underrepresentation of women, Wood argues