Julia Wood On Gender Roles In The Media

Is it possible that media outlets today no longer play out stereotypical roles when it comes to genders? Many people may have different views on this, Julia Wood is one of them. Julia Wood is a gender communication leader and loves to teach and educate those on the topics of masculinity and femininity in our society. One way she teaches this is in her article, “Gendered Media”, which talks about how many different media outlets presents impractical and stereotypical views on gender roles. It breaks down the different ways in which media constantly play a role in distorting people’s perception. A movie in which has a connection to the idea of gendered media is “Crazy Stupid Love”. The main character, Carl, is a middle aged man who has the perfect

life. He has a well paying job and the perfect family. Everything seemed to be going great until his wife, Emily, openly admitted to having an affair with her coworker named David Lindhagen. Carl is now single man who lost his touch with the dating world which led Jacob Palmer to come into the picture to help. Jacob is a well-styled, smooth-talking, and handsome man who takes Carl to teach him the ways with the ladies once again. Jacob guides Carl through every step it takes to revive the manhood he lost, starting with the clothing all the way to how he treats the ladies.

By looking at the article “Gendered media” and the movie “Crazy Stupid Love”, I can agree with Wood’s arguments about how movie media continues to send traditional gendered messages though some of these messages may not apply to media today.
“Gendered Media: The influence of Media on Views of Gender” by Julia Wood is a piece of writing that was taken from her book titled “Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture”. In this article, Wood presents to us the role media plays in distorting the images between gender roles in our society. Wood starts off her argument by analyzing the underrepresentation of women within the world of media. According to Wood, many media outlets twisted the image of the amount of women and men there is in our society to the point where it may even seem as if men have outnumbered the amount of women in the population. Many male are portrayed as powerful, heartless, and sexually arouse figures who in any way cannot show their feelings. While the male is seen as these strong figures, women are portrayed as either good or bad. According to Wood, the image of good or bad are put up against one another to show us the contrast between the two characteristics in relation to a woman. A good woman is seen as “pretty, deferential, and focused on home, family, and caring for others” and are usually chosen to play the customary role as the “victim, angels, martyrs, and loyal wives and helpmates”. If this is not the chosen description, there is no other way to give off the same image unless their occupation remains a secret or to overpower their character with femininity. By doing this, they are able to maintain the image of a good female role. On the other hand, media who take on creating the image of a bad woman generally exaggerate how evil and lonely a woman can be to be a counter the good female. Adding on to the stereotypes of genders, the media also focuses on presenting the stereotypical images of relationships between men and women. From Wood’s writing, we can see that it is no coincidence that women are often seen depending on a man for everything. This creates an image of a man who can do anything whereas the women cannot do as much for herself or for others. With the idea of women being dependent on the man, Wood points out that there is also the image of the women being incompetent and the man taking control. Many females typically play the role as nurturing mothers or wives, but that is all they’ll be because in media only the male role can succeed in a career or anything for the matter of fact. Wood makes a point that because the media create these stereotypes between genders, our society struggles to understand why the male figure is the only one capable of succeeding whereas the female figure is only there to support him. The perception of the men being the only one succeeds also makes the stereotype that if a man does not succeed, he is not worthy whereas if a woman succeeds, she is only capable of looking good and her femininity. Since a man is seen as the authority, he also carries the responsibility to provide for his family while the female are often the ones at home caring for the house and the children. Her role in life is to be the wife to her husband and the mother to her child. The final thing Wood adds to this text is that women are often victims to being objectified. Women are often pushed to be beautiful and sexy in order to fulfil the ideal female image, yet this image only leads them to only becoming the objects of a man’s sexual desire. According to Wood, there is no win win situation for a woman because it does not matter who she is, what matters is that she is either seen as attractive or seen as a target to a man with sexual urges. Julia Wood argues that different media outlets plays a role in creating stereotypes in which shapes the views of many people in our society in a way where we see male as one thing and females as another.
Wood points out that men are capable of keeping their emotions in check and taking ownership with how they want to feel and when they want to feel it. (32). Men are these figures that we see as capable of keeping their emotions to themselves, but I disagree with this because Carl fulfills the role of a man who is constantly expressing his feelings and badgering everyone with it. The scene starts when Carl called over by a good-looking man named Jacob. Carl is confused as to why he was being called over, but as soon as he sits down, he mentions his wife’s affair. Jacob has been already aware of this because he said that is all he and everyone in the bar heard all night. Jacob continues by telling Carl that he is “badgering everyone with his sad, sad loser sob story”. Carl wanted to deny those words, but he knew deep down that Jacob’s words were true nonetheless. Men are usually not the one to be hurt when it comes to relationships or just in general when it comes to media. They are always capable of showing that nothing really bothers them and even make it seem as if they are emotionless. Carl shows the complete opposite. He did not once hide how he felt. He constantly expressed how upset and hurt he was, instead of acting though his wife’s action had no effect on him emotionally. He cries and made sure that everyone fully understood how horrible of person his wife was to make him feel so emotionally wrecked and drained. He wants the whole bar to know and pity him for all the things he had to deal with internally.We can see that he transcends the typical idea that men are in control of their feelings by going on and on about until the whole world knew how he felt and how much of an emotional toll everything has caused him. Though Wood states that men are emotionless, in my movie Carl proves this otherwise by going beyond the idea and showing that men can have just as much emotion as a women.
Though I may disagree that men are always portrayed as being in control of their feelings, I do agree with Wood’s point that women are sexually objectified with the help of men provoking these actions.

Women in the media usually are the victims to a man’s action and words. I agree that women in the media have become the victims to a man sexual desire while the men are the aggressors to the victimizing. Jacob goes to the bar prepared and ready everyday in hopes of scoring with a different woman every day. His number goal when going to that bar is to be able to use his looks and words to get a woman to go home and sleep with him. This scene shows a montage of Jacob seducing about six different women in order to get them to agree to go home with him. Every single one of the conversations ended with Jacob’s famous smile and smooth yet forceful line “let’s get out of here”. The scene ends with him guiding each woman to the exit. In media, adult females are always seen as these figures that will satisfy a man’s desire. Jacob sees these women as sexual objects and nothing more than that. He does not want to have deep conversations nor even hang out with them. He is there for one and one thing only, sex. Each of these adult females are portrayed as easy targets who did not once make a complaint about Jacob’s seduction. The women were only shown falling for Jacob’s game instead of standing up against him. Jacob’s persistent yet forceful words showed viewers that women will

easily settle for it and will agree to go home to sleep with you. Wood’s point that women being sexual objects and humans being the aggressor is still present in my movie today when looking at all these women becoming the victim to Jacob’s sexual desires.
There is a sense of agreement when it comes to looking at the article, “Gendered Media” and the movie, “Crazy Stupid Love”, in which they both still sends traditional gendered messages though some are not present in media today. In my writing, I break down the two dissimilar ideas of the stereotypical messages that plays a role or no longer plays a role in media. One being that men have controlled feelings which are no longer played out in the media and second being that men are the attackers while the women are the objects which still noticeably still present. Looking at this, many teenagers can understand that sometimes the things that are presented in media are not necessarily realistic. Some are blown out of proportion or even are undermined so that it is not seen as relevant in comparison to something else. Though some of these are not messages we should base our life on, some can be relatable and most definitely true. Gendered messages are sometimes presented in ways where we as teenagers have already seen it play in the many media we watch today. Many would say that today’s media does not do it justice at eliminating the gendered role messages but as time slowly progresses so does the evolution and growth of our gendered roles. It may still be present but it is slowly making a change.