Gender Roles in the Media

From the moment they are born and wrapped in a pink or blue blanket, a child's gender is unmistakable. From this point on, they will continuously be bombarded with the socialization into their gender by many sources. One of the main sources of this socialization is media, more specifically television. The purpose of this paper is to describe gender roles and stereotypes, and to take a closer look at how the media's representation and portrayal of males and females affects children.

Gender differences are the "sets of attributes socially and culturally constructed on the basis of birth assignment as male or female" (Creedon, 1993, p.5). When a baby is born and wrapped in a colored blanket based on their gender, one of the first things many parents think about his how perfect their little boy or girl is; How strong and handsome their son will be with his dad's strong hands; How beautiful their daughter is because of her "big blue eyes." The last question on the minds of the parents however, is how, by choosing that blanket for their child and thinking these thoughts, they have commenced the idealistic gendering process. Many parents fail to think twice about setting guidelines for their children from birth on what it means to be either male or female, because doing so has become so natural to our society. "We live in a culture built on a particular set of gender assumptions and structured to amplify if not produce gender asymmetries and inequalities, and we come to view these differences as part of the natural world" (Creedon, 1993, p.5).

In the media, the roles of males and females differ immensely. "Women, especially young women, are primarily depicted as sex objects and men as success objects. In both cases, the ...

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