Stereotyping: The Judgement We Make About People

The judgments we make about people, events or places are based on our own direct impressions. But for most of the knowledge, we rely on media. The media actually re-present the world to us. However, the media only shows us some aspects of the world, ignoring the rest (Andrew Pilkington and Alan Yeo 2009). In this essay, I will explain what stereotypes are and primarily give an example of a famous men’s magazine called ‘nuts’ and explain how it stereotypes women and what are their impacts on people.

A stereotype can be defined as creating an on oversimplified, false or generalized portrayal of a group of people or an individual. They are often inaccurate. Though our world seems to be improving in many other ways, it seems almost impossible to emancipate it from stereotypes. Today, the media is so powerful that it can make or break an image of a person and can also change the views of the audience.

Advertising across billboards, TV and newspapers colludes to tell us that all women look a very specific way. Gender is perhaps the basic category we use for sorting human beings. The media mostly portrays men as strong, masculine, tough, hard and independent while women are shown as fragile, soft, clean and mostly 'sexy'. Whatever the role, the print and the visual media are full of images of women who are typically white and desperately thin. They are tailored to be the perfect woman. The representation of women on the print and the visual media mostly tend to be stereotypical, in terms of societal expectations (REFERENCE)

One such magazine that represents women in a stereotypical manner is called Nuts. Claiming to be United Kingdom’s no.1 lad magazine. This magazine gives its targeted readers a weekly fix of gadgets, a page is...

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...ependent create very low expectations for girls these thoughts could breed lack of respect for women. Hence, the impact of such stereotypes in the media the media among people, especially on young people is not very good. They tend to have a simplistic, immutable and a typical image of women in their minds. It is essential to educate the children from an early age about how to recognize, be aware and overcome stereotypes.

To conclude, the mass media is at complete fault of the representation that many individuals have of women. They have been seen as over-sexed individuals who are made to do housework and raise children. There are very few magazine ads that represent women in the workplace or as independent individuals. These stereotypes are even though somewhere changing but it’s almost impossible to completely demolish all the stereotypes related to women.