Representation Of Gender In The Media

The word gender, as stated by James M. Henslin, is defined as the “behaviors and attitudes that a society considers proper for its males and females; masculinity or femininity” (Henslin 291). When we think of gender, we think of male and female and that is that. Males are masculine, females are the weaker of the two. The roles of the two genders have been defined over the centuries, not many deriving from the norm. We group up “learning society’s “gender map,” the paths in life set out for us because we are male or female” (Henslin 74). The people we look up to and grow up with are one of the many influences that subject us to the roles we believe we are required to take just because of our gender. Mass media and media images also affect gender

If you watch any movie, TV show or even just a simple commercial on television, you can clearly see that media portrays the population as men having quite a bit more percentage of the population. Julia T. Wood states in an article about media views of gender that “this constant distortion tempts us to believe that there really are more men than women and, further, that men are the cultural standard” (Wood 31). Since women are so greatly underrepresented in media, so you can only imagine how underrepresented minorities are. The fact that females are depicted as less important and underrepresented happens for a reason. This reason being that there are not enough women in charge of media so this also mirrors in the media. But even though there are more men than women according to media, that does not stop them from portraying women as sex objects and inferior to men. There are a lot of multimedia that you can find, give or take a few here and there, that objectifies the woman and is centered to reel men in. Car commercials, for example, give plenty of light to half naked women driving nice cars. The media industry uses sex appeal to reel in the male population. This depiction is very degrading to women. So because of the media portrayal of gender roles, young children grow up learning the roles of females being less important and sex objects and men