Martha Stewart Gender Roles

Since the biblical days, society was very structural with the role of the “Man” and the “Woman.” This concept came to be known as the term gender roles, referring to the significant differences between men and women due to an established role and expectation created by society itself. Society’s expectations of the man’s character were assertiveness, analytical, and unemotional. These characteristics, collectively, coin the term masculine for men. And society’s expectations of the woman’s character were sensitivity, nurturing, and emotional, which together coined the term feminine. Along with the standards of feminine and masculine came responsibilities both the man and the woman. The male had economic responsibilities and the female had domestic

They did this by having the woman on posters look happy being a housewife. The women in these posters, advertisements, and political cartoons would usually have an apron on in the kitchen or with a rolling pin in her hand and exuberant. In the late 1900’s Martha Stewart started her magazine line, which was aimed primarily at the women population. Martha Stewart made sewing, arts, and other household activities popular once again. These prints are exposed to all ages, so the conditioning of gender roles starts young. Tineke M. Willemsen, who is a social psychologist from Leiden University, did an analysis to see if the gender stereotypes for the Netherlands, the U.S., and other Western Countries, which is women are emotional and men are rational, was more of a conditioning from the magazines or an observation the magazines picked up from statistics. Based off of Tineke Willemsen’s work, one can easily conclude that the Netherlands’ and the United States’ both have particular magazines to aim at specific sexes, and most of the magazines are aimed at female. The main magazine Willemsen analyzed was Teen magazine, which is a magazine aimed at the younger women of the population

James Adam’s intent for the meaning of the American dream was "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement” (James Truslow Adams). However, society molded Truslow’s American dream idea into another form of gender stereotypical roles of a comfortable family. Society made the meaning of the American dream more of a standard that everyone needs to meet in order be called successful. This standard society set within the American Dream was for a man to have 2.5 kids, a wife, a dog, a house, a white picket fence and to live comfortably, which everyone wanted to meet some point their life. In the American dream, again, the woman is a domestic housewife and the man is bringing the bacon home. The man is still the leader and masculine while the female is still a stay at home wife and feminine. This idea of the American Dream rather than Adam’s idea of the American Dream was pumped up by the media between the commercials and shows that portrayed the American Dream. They showed on television that the best life to have as a man is to be the head of his own household with a trophy wife and it showed the most fulfillment for a woman would to be married to a man of mid or high class and staying at home taking on all the domestic