Sexism can have many negative impacts on the way women view themselves, research was conducted and it showed that when exposed to modern sexism, women expressed negative self-directed emotions. Modern sexism exposure also resulted in stereotypical self-presentation, where in contrast, women who were exposed to old-fashioned sexism displayed less self-defeating behavior. This research concluded that women were more likely to stand up and defend themselves against the old-fashioned gender stereotypes, but let the modern day expectations defeat them (Ellemers & Barreto, 2009).
The long-running stereotype that men and women cannot be “just friends” is demonstrated from casual friends all the way to friendships at work. And with 61 percentage of women in the workplace in 1990 (The First Measured Century), it’s a stereotype that is getting harder to break. For years, development of men and women’s friendships has been a trope in TV and movies. Boy and girl become friends, guy develops feelings, girl gets boyfriend, guy becomes jealous and confesses feelings, and girl realizes she’s been in love with guy all along (Borreli, L. 2016). These expectations of men and women in friendships are bad for business though. Cross-sex friendships are crucial in the workplace. Friends in the workplace provide information, networking, and support that are invaluable for both job performance and satisfaction (Kimmel & Aronson 2014, 542). Bonds between cross-sex friendships are charging according to a study. Men and women often see each other as friends or confidants rather than romantic interests. There are other types of bonds than romantic connections that can occur and does occur between males and
Mother-in-laws can often be the bane of a man’s existence. In American culture, jokes are often made about wanting to avoid a mother-in-law at all costs. For example, a recent BMW car commercial depicts a new feature in the car which can read texts out loud by showing a man pulling into his driveway and receiving a text from his wife that his mother-in-law was over visiting. The man immediately backs out of the driveway and leaves. This is what anthropologist A.R. Radcliffe-Brown would have classified as an avoidant relationship—one common in many cultures. In addition to avoidant relationships, Radcliffe Brown also identified joking relationships. These two concepts aid in showing the functions of different social groups and the rules
Today, love, sex and romance are three main topics that presented in media as main themes discuss in contemporary popular culture. Social media is important in shaping audience value about feminism through the framework of contemporary media like films, magazines, plays, advertisements, TV shows, graphic novels, etc. The television show “Sex and the City” incorporates “pop feminism” that influences many lives of women. Sex and the City is originally talking about four single thirty-something women living in Manhattan. They are coming to New York in order to seek “love and labels” (Sex and the City). The main theme of Sex and the City is concentrating on contemporary American woman’s conception of sex, love, and romance. As we learned from lecture, sex, love, and romance have a history; they are different in different cultures; they are shaped by gender, class, race, ethnicity, nation, ability, and other differences (Lecture Notes). Sex and the City is focusing on modern American woman’s experiences and their thinks with sex, love, and romance. The four main women characters in Sex and the City represent diversity of gender, class, race, ethnicity, religion, age, able-bodiedness through their different experience and expectations of their life (Lecture Notes). Sex and the City represents that the feminism notions of sex, love, and romance are socially constructed, and this social construction of sex, love and romance are featured in these female characters’ personalities.
Kimmel, Michael. “ “Bros Before Hos”: The Guy Code.” Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing. Colombo, Gary, Robert Cullen, and Bonnie Lisle. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford of St. Martin's, 2013. 464. Print.
Lorber, J. (1994). Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender. Paradoxes of Gender (pp. 54-67). New Haven: Yale University Press.
When thinking about romantic relationships, whether in the movies, media or your own relationship what characteristics come to mind? The topic we will discuss in this presentation attends to the romantic relationships within interpersonal communication.
Sproull, L. and Kiesler, S. (1986). Reducing social context cues: Electronic mail in organizational communication. Management Science, 32, 1492-1512.
Friendship has been crucial to the survival of women especially those whose social class puts at a disadvantage. Margaret Andersen, in her book, Thinking About Women: Sociological Perspectives on Sex and Gender, asserts that “Despite long-held assumptions that women’s primary identity was attached to men, research now shows the important role that friendships between women have, including women who live within stable heterosexual relationships” (94). While her claim on women primarily being identified with men is an assumption maybe contested, she points out the importance of friendship to women, which necessarily does not have a sexual undertone.
The world enjoys pigeonholing both men and women. It can be exhausting living in our judgmental society, where there is an expectation for each gender to fit into a rigid box of stereotypes. That is why, when Dave Barry is given the negative stereotypical question, “‘Why do men open a drawer and say, ‘Where is the spatula?’ Instead of, you know, looking for it?’” (1), he goes into a ranting frenzy. Barry responds and challenges this negative question in his column, on February 4, 1999, by writing the essay, “From here on, let women kill their own spiders”. Dave Barry utilizes the rhetorical devices of sarcasm, anaphora, and hyperbole to prove that is is pointless and ludicrous to create platitudes and stereotypes about each gender.
Communication is a vital component of everyday relationships in all of mankind. In plays, there are many usual staging and dialogue techniques that directors use to achieve the attention of the audience. However, in the play, “Post-its (Notes on a Marriage)”, the authors Paul Dooley and Winnie Holzman use both staging and conversation in order to convey the struggles of modern relationships. The play is unconventional in how it attempts to have the audience react in a unique way. The authors use staging and conversation to portray to the audience that there are complex problems with communication in modern relationships.
The Bro Code: How Contemporary Culture Creates Sexist Men. Dir. Thomas Keith. Media Education Foundation, 2011.
We decided long ago that the Male Chauvinist Pig was an unenlightened rube, but the Female Chauvinist Pig has risen to a kind of exalted status. She is post feminist. She is funny. She gets it. She doesn’t mind cartoonish stereotypes of female sexuality, and she doesn’t mind a cartoonish macho response to them. The FCP asks: Why throw your boyfriend’s Playboy in a freedom trash can when you could be partying at the mansion? Why worry about disgusting or degrading when you could be giving – or getting – a lap dance yourself? Why try to beat them when you can join them? (267).
...ve begins generating rumors for male peers who do not qualify as a stereotypical male. For instance, Olive pretends to have sex with a male peer during a popular house party (Gluck, 2010). This imaginary hook-up benefits the male peer’s bullying dilemma. Again, gender policing occurs between men when masculinity is questioned (Kimmel, 2008). “One survey found that most Americans boys would be rather be punched in the face than called gay” (Kimmel, 2000, p.77). The gender police govern Olive’s and the male peer’s status in social standings. America’s obsession with sex disregards if a girl truly sleeps around.
For example, the representation of women on television was for a long time restricted to roles of “loving wives, dutiful daughters, gossiping girlfriends, fashion plates, and the occasional dowdy maid, nanny, or granny” (Zeisler 2008, p. 9), which is a reflection on the roles it was considered ‘acceptable’ for women to take on in real life. Often going against the hegemonic gender ideal is used as shorthand for comedy within popular culture, such as men dressed femininely being played for laughs on countless sitcoms. Popular culture that genuinely challenges hegemonic ideology often faces backlash, as was the case when Ellen DeGeneres’ character coming out on Ellen (1997), as did the actress in real life, resulted in the show being cancelled after only one more season. This is reflective of what was the pervasive belief, that heterosexuality is the only acceptable option, though the changing attitudes about this can be seen through the increased inclusion of gay and bisexual characters in pop culture over the past two decades. Looking at the relationship between gender and popular culture consequently becomes important to the field of gender studies as it provides a way to study not only what is considered to be the gender norms in a society, but how these norms have