Portrayal of Women in the Media
Gender is the psychological characteristics and social categories that are created by human culture. Doing gender is the concept that humans express their gender when they interact with one another. Messages about how a male or female is supposed to act come from many different places. Schools, parents, and friends can influence a person. Another major factor that influences millions of impressionable females and males is television. Not only does the television teach each sex how to act, it also shows how one sex should expect the other sex to act. In the current television broadcasting, stereotypical behavior goes from programming for the very small to adult audiences. In this broadcasting range, females are portrayed as motherly, passive and innocent, sex objects, or they are overlooked completely or seen as unimportant entities.
Stereotyping women is not only rampant in the adult world; it also flourishes in the kiddie universe as well. Here, there are depictions of women and girls as motherly or innocent, silly, and passive. This occurs not only in popular programming on Public Broadcasting, but also on television in other countries. Mothering images on Philippine TV has shown some of the same trends that is seen in the United States. Although “Teletubbies and Barney & Friends display an equal representation in number, each show displays gender stereotyped qualities,” it is obvious that these programs are sometimes reinforcing the wrong ideas about gender roles to children, roles that feminists have been battling for almost half a century. “Both programs demonstrated clear gendered roles with males being more active and females being more social and passive. This distinction appeared most obviously in the real-life segments of both programs with women as mother or passive viewer of action. Neither program shows women or men in non-stereotypical roles, indicating at an early age children are exposed to gender-specific occupational expectations.” Each show has children as additional characters, and each episode consists of a live action activity.
In Barney & Friends, Barney interacts with two female sidekicks. Baby Bop is “a silly, excitable, and giddy [dinosaur] carrying a blankey, wearing a bow—a stereotypical little girl”. She plays dress-up, sings, and plays pretend where she might be a ballerina or...
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...get less attention than male’s. “On boys’ favorite TV shows, male characters are frequently portrayed at work, while the occupations of nearly half of female characters are unidentified.” This is damaging because boys will begin to think that either women are lazy and can’t find work, or their work is not important enough to be seen as something to regard.
The media and television broadcasting of women is not all negative. But current culture is constantly taking the easy way out. It refuses to explore different ways in which women can be represented. That is why for years to come women will still be seen as motherly, passive and innocent, sex objects, or they are overlooked or seen as unimportant entities. Whether it’s motherly birds on kids TV shows or scantily clad dancers on Monday Night Football, the portrayal of women has yet to catch up with what real life women are like. There are single women, obese women, and smart women. Women who are single mom’s, lesbians, or don’t have any children at all. Women are able to do the same type of work as men without being manly. The day that women are treated as equals on television will whole new level of success for feminism.
Grandmother, mother, daughter, sister, aunt: what does the future hold for the women of the world? In 1991 Katha Pollitt had that same question. In an article in The New York Times Pollitt expressed her concerns regarding female role models in the media for the younger generation. “Contemporary shows are either essentially all-male, like Garfield, or organized on what I call the Smurfette principle: a group of male buddies will be accented by a lone female, stereotypically defined” (as cited in Green & Lindsky, 2012, p. 546) Katha Pollitt argues that the television shows children are watching are predominantly male leads, thus leaving girls without suitable role models. But why does a role model for a girl have to be a woman? Over the 25
The media, through its many outlets, has a lasting effect on the values and social structure evident in modern day society. Television, in particular, has the ability to influence the social structure of society with its subjective content. As Dwight E. Brooks and Lisa P. Hébert write in their article, “GENDER, RACE, AND MEDIA REPRESENTATION”, the basis of our accepted social identities is heavily controlled by the media we consume. One of the social identities that is heavily influenced is gender: Brooks and Hébert conclude, “While sex differences are rooted in biology, how we come to understand and perform gender is based on culture” (Brooks, Hébert 297). With gender being shaped so profusely by our culture, it is important to be aware of how social identities, such as gender, are being constructed in the media.
Society cements certain roles for children based on gender, and these roles, recognized during infancy with the assistance of consumerism, rarely allow for openness of definition. A study conducted by Witt (1997) observed that parents often expect certain behaviors based on gender as soon as twenty-four hours after the birth of a child. The gender socialization of infants appears most noticeably by the age of eighteen months, when children display sex-stereotyped toy preferences (Caldera, Huston, & O’Brian 1989). This socialization proves extremely influential on later notions and conceptions of gender. Children understand gender in very simple ways, one way being the notion of gender permanence—if one is born a girl or a boy, they will stay that way for life (Kohlberg 1966). “According to theories of gender constancy, until they’re about 6 or 7, children don’t realize that the sex they were born with is immutable” (Orenstein 2006). The Walt Disney Corporation creates childhood for children worldwide. “Because Disney are such a large media corporation and their products are so ubiquitous and wide spread globally, Disney’s stories, the stories that Disney tell, will be the stories that will form and help form a child’s imaginary world, all over the world, and that’s an incredible amount of power, enormous amount of power” (Sun). Because of the portrayal of women in Disney films, specifically the Disney Princess films, associations of homemaker, innocence, and dependence are emphasized as feminine qualities for young children. Thus, children begin to consider such qualities normal and proceed to form conceptions of gender identity based off of the movies that portray the very specific and limiting views of women (...
The work's topicality is characterized by the existence of the gender stereotypes in society, having generalization, and does not reflect individual differences in the human categories. Meanwhile, there is still discrimination on the labour market, human trafficking, sexual harassment, violence, women and men roles and their places in the family. Mass media offers us the reality, reduces the distance, but we still can see the negative aspects too. TV cultivates gender stereotypes, offering ideas about gender, relationships and ways for living. Such media ideas attach importance to many people in the society. Consequently, it is quite important identify gender stereotypes in the media, in order to prevent false views relating to gender stereotypes.
Media surrounds an individual in the form of platforms including television, advertisments and film. These are accessible in the majority of places in current culture. As a result it plays a large role in creating social norms, as they are so wide spread. Gender roles exist soley because society as a whole chooses to accept them, however, they can be encouraged by the media. Gender representation in television is an important aspect in encouraging or discouraging these roles. An example of gender roles, in terms of femininty and masculinity, is men who are generally expected to be strong showing little emotion; whilst women are more submissive and are expected to stay at home attending to household
Leaper, C., Breed, L., & Perlman, C. (2002). Variations in gender stereotyped content of children's television cartoons across genres. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32 (8), 1653-4363.
On a daily basis people are exposed to some sort of misrepresentation of gender; in the things individuals watch, and often the things that are purchased. Women are often the main target of this misrepresentation. “Women still experience actual prejudice and discrimination in terms of unequal treatment, unequal pay, and unequal value in real life, then so too do these themes continue to occur in media portraits.”(Byerly, Carolyn, Ross 35) The media has become so perverted, in especially the way it represents women, that a females can be handled and controlled by men, the individual man may not personally feel this way, but that is how men are characterized in American media. Some may say it doesn’t matter because media isn’t real life, but people are influenced by everything around them, surroundings that are part of daily routine start to change an individual’s perspective.
In their pieces on the Smurfette principle, Pollitt and Ellis both discuss the idea that gender representations have intense effects on the children who absorb certain types of popular entertainment. Although we are hesitant to accept it, we are all influenced by the media in a very powerful way. Whether it be through TV shows, billboards, movies or the news. One thing that we commonly wonder about is if the adult female population is as influenced by the stereotyped gender roles present on TV or are we shaped at a young age and carry that perspective with us throughout our lives. This Smurfette principle has been around for almost two decades. It was introduced by Katha Pollitt and is unfortunately still present in our current 21st century.
Throughout history when we think about women in society we think of small and thin. Today's current portrayal of women stereotypes the feminine sex as being everything that most women are not. Because of this depiction, the mentality of women today is to be thin and to look a certain way. There are many challenges with women wanting to be a certain size. They go through physical and mental problems to try and overcome what they are not happy with. In the world, there are people who tell us what size we should be and if we are not that size we are not even worth anything. Because of the way women have been stereotyped in the media, there has been some controversial issues raised regarding the way the world views women. These issues are important because they affect the way we see ourselvescontributing in a negative way to how positive or negative our self image is.
Everybody is born and made differently, but one thing is similar, our gender. We are born either male or female, and in society everybody judges us for our gender. This is called gender roles; societies expecting you to act like a male or female (Rathus, 2010). Some people say, “act like a lady,” or “be a man,” these are examples of how gender roles work in our everyday lives. In society when we think stereotypes, what do we think? Many think of jocks, nerds, or popular kids; gender stereotyping is very similar. Gender stereotypes are thoughts of what the gender is supposed to behave like (Rathus, 2010). One example of a gender stereotype for a man would be a worker for the family, and a women stereotype would be a stay at home mom. Though in todays age we don’t see this as much, but it is still around us. In different situations both gender roles and stereotypes are said and done on a daily basis and we can’t avoid them because everyone is different.
From birth, society assigns people different roles depending on gender and surrounds them with the expectation to act differently. According to Mead, Some feminine characteristics include depend, passive, quiet, weak, soft, accepting, and graceful. Masculine characteristics include aggressive, clumsy, experienced, strong, active, competitive, and non-emotional. Children learn gender roles at an early age from their family, culture, religion, as well as outsides forces like television, magazines and other media. Adolescents read ads filled with airbrushed, perfect women; girls look...
Despite some opposing ideas, the stereotypes in the media have negative impacts for both men and women and also children. I personally think that the media should not place a huge barrier in between the genders because it only creates extreme confinements and hinders people from their full potential. Overall, it is evident that the media has had an important role in representing gender and stereotypes in our
Men are usually associated with dominance, being a higher class, and aggressiveness. Women are associated with being fragile, nurturing, and subordination. The role you play in this world is made up before you’re even born. When you are born and you are a boy they dress you in blue. If you are a female you are dressed up in pink. Gender socialization occurs throughout agents named education family, and what the media thinks is right. All of these example show how gender roles are creating expectations for the gender of the child. Other agents that determine how you act are things such as religion. How the stereotypes of a religion can leave you trapped being someone or something you do not want to be. Things that should be gotten rid
The Representation of Men and Women in the Media Men and women are both represented differently in the media these days. Then the sand was sunk. Ironically it was even represented differently in the title of this essay. Men came before women! I am writing an essay to explain how men and women are represented in the media.
Gender, on the other hand, refers to the sociological differences between male and female. This teaches males and females to behave in various ways due to socialisation (Browne, 1998). Example: masculinity and femininity. Girls are supposed to show their femininity by being non-competitive, sensitive, dependent, attractive and placid. If and when some girls don’t succeed in keeping this image, they will be referred to as a tomboy.