Gender Stereotypes

Have you ever watched a little girl playing house? Even as young as five or six years old, she is well aware that she is supposed to stay home with the baby while the husband goes to work, and she has dinner ready when he gets home. We learn prejudicial attitudes at an early age from observing the stereotypical roles that people in our families assume. As we progress through school, these attitudes are reinforced by our classmates and peers. There are many views of women and men in mass media and different types of groups are portrayed differently in a negative way. Mass media should not categorize people in groups such as, race, gender, ethnicity and even religion because what it does is create biased negative attitudes against women and men and a negative impact on society.

We find many different definitions of beauty in the mass media that can be things such as being attractive, appealing, alluring and charming. It all just depends on each individual, whether they see inner beauty or outer beauty. Beauty can be one’s quality of being physical attractive or have characteristics that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure and satisfaction. One thing that people find attractive are facial features and symmetry. Teresa Opdycke stated, “Scientists and researchers have said that the number one criteria for beauty comes down to symmetry.” This affects men and women because they are portrayed to be perfectly symmetrical and their facial features are going to define how others perceive their beauty. We define mass media as a way of communicating with a large group of audience and conveying a message. It can be through television, internet, magazines, books, and radio. Another thing that people use to define beauty can be...

... middle of paper ...

... on their husbands. Times have changed, men are not the only ones who could provide but women still have a long way to go to reach that level in society.

Mass media portrays men and women differently and paints a negative picture to society of what they should expect for them to do and how they expect for them to look like. There are many ways to think about a human being but ultimately it is our own decision. We decide what to think of others because of their gender and how we perceive them. We make our own decision because we have ultimately control of our mind. Who gets to decide how beauty is truly defined? It is different for everyone, as the saying goes, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Everyone has their own perspective of what is beautiful and that can be inner beauty or outer beauty but it all becomes their own opinion, nothing more than that.