The Effects of Printed Media on Gender Roles

I will be looking at women’s 'to-be-looked-at-ness', and examining the

representations of women as objects of the male gaze and male desires.

In simple terms, a stereotype is the application of one (usually

negative) characteristic to a whole group. The stereotype is an easy

concept to understand, but there are some points you need to consider

when looking at media representations with regard to stereotyping. For

a stereotype to ‘work’ it needs to be recognisable to the audience and

when so recognised, then judgements are made about the subject. If the

stereotype is negative, then the judgements will also tend to be the

same. The predictable thing about stereotypes is that they are

predictable! They create a sense of order and also provide a sense of

identity (even if it is a negative one!) Stereotypical judgements and

stereotypical media representations can (and often do) lead to

different treatments of groups by other groups, (sadly, often quite

discriminatory).

If we define ‘male’ and ‘female’ all we are doing is a biological

classification, but if we think about the terms ‘masculine’ and

‘feminine’ we have to think about certain roles and lifestyles. Put

simply, the words have very specific ideological assumptions of what

is ‘natural behaviour’ for each sex. The portrayal of men and women in

traditional roles is very prominent and also very contested in

advertising. Characters, both male and female are constantly placed in

roles, socially constructed to 'match' their gender. In other words,

society has constructed (made) a set of ‘truths’ about what is the

‘right’ way for a man or a woman to behave.

The media, of cou...

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to highlight these changes. These reversals are, however, often

portrayed in a sarcastic or less serious than in other adverts.

Without these gender roles maybe society would have had an adverse

effect on the media and what we portray as acceptable would in fact be

outrageous.

Why is the media so important? —One may ask. More often than not, it’s

the way we get most of our information. Information we tend to think

of as the “truth.

Overall when looking at different types of media I got the general

impression that women are portrayed in a worthless provocative manor.

This was repeated in the same way across the whole range and always

looked as if they were being exploited. Society have dictated to the

media what they want to buy and see, all that’s left for the media to

do is provide this product.