The new social movement sweeping across America is the use of social media. Magazines are just one way that is put in the reach of men and women to communicate with each other. The “media and communications are a central element of modern life, whilst gender and sexuality remain at the core of how we think about our identities.” (Gaunlett, Pg.6) Although the outlets of communication are different they both strive to reach an audience that ultimately is affected by the media. Therefore reinforcing the idea that “magazines aimed at women, and increasingly those for men, contain all kinds of advice on how to live, look and interact. Even if we only read these items in an ironic state of mind, it must all sink in somewhere.” (Gaunlett, Pg. 7)
The methods in which communication is achieved to the gendered can be broken down into two distinct ways, the sex-dialect hypothesis and the sex-stereotype hypothesis. The sex-dialect suggest “the judgment of communication of women and men is based on actual language performance differences.” (Holmes and Miriam, Pg.531) While as the opposite “the sex-stereotype hypothesis does not assume that actual language differences are a necessary precondition for differential judgments, but rather proposes that judgments are determined by stereotypical expectations.” (Holmes and Miriam, Pg.531) These two methods of conveying a message vary because of how men and women are expected to speak. For example when a man is upfront and very blunt he is being directive while this approach is okay for men it is the not expected of women. They are more drawn back and reserved when speaking ore receiving information. This all comes into play when marketing, advertising, and selling o...
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...ghts, and conclusions for each to identify with when growing up and developing throughout a lifetime. These very distinct publications give the foundation needed to represent a generation with the use of media for everyday life of the people who choose to accept the message. Even though it might be difficult the idea of non-traditional features of today shape the landscape of tomorrow for men and women. “Understanding the overt and subtle gender messages in media empowers us to be more critical consumers. As individuals and citizens, we have a responsibility to criticize media representations that demean men and women and that contribute to attitudes that harm us and our relationships.” (Wood, Pg. 287) With incorporating the idea that all men and women can make a difference and change things when communicating no matter their age, size, or race.
In "Where the girls are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media," Susan Douglas analyses the effects of mass media on women of the nineteen fifties, and more importantly on the teenage girls of the baby boom era. Douglas explains why women have been torn in conflicting directions and are still struggling today to identify themselves and their roles. Douglas recounts and dissects the ambiguous messages imprinted on the feminine psyche via the media. Douglas maintains that feminism is a direct result of the realization that mass media is a deliberate and calculated aggression against women. While the media seemingly begins to acknowledge the power of women, it purposely sets out to redefine women and the qualities by which they should define themselves. The contradictory messages received by women leave women not only in a love/hate relationship with the media, but also in a love/hate relationship with themselves.
Michael Abernathy’s article “Male Bashing on TV” uses many television sources and percentages to explain how men are treated like idiots inside of the media. Abernathy is a television reviewer, cultural critic, and queer culture commentator (350). While Heather Havrilesky's article “TV’s New Wave of Women:Smart, Strong, Borderline Insane” is the opposite and uses television sources to explain how women are treated as smart yet crazy inside of the media. These two articles describe how men and women are portrayed differently in television shows and the media. The articles have smaller subtopics in common which are the portrayal of men and women in the media, the comparison of men and women in each article, and how Abernathy and Havrilesky want
Instead, women are being discriminated and treated as inferior due to the stereotypes that are portrayed in the media. The media creates and reproduces ways of seeing that at a minimum reflect and shape our culture. We can look at the media to understand more about a culture’s values and norms, if we realize the limitations of looking at the media. For example, one may ask, does the news based in the United Sates represent what the American culture is like, or only what stands out from everyday American culture? The answer to that is no. Instead, the media represents what it thinks it will be able to sell and is supported by advertisements. This includes violent acts, the sensationally and inappropriate. Jhally reminds us that “it is this male, heterosexual, pornographic imagination based on the degradation and control of women that has colonized commercial culture in general, although it is more clearly articulated in music videos” (Jhally 2007). Therefore, “media content is a symbolic rather than a literal representation of society and that to be represented in the media is in itself a form of power—social groups that are powerless can be relatively easily ignored, allowing the media to focus on the social groups that ‘really matter’” (Gerbner,
In the society we live in, we are all looking for acceptance, whether we like to admit it or not. We turn to the media to see what other people are doing. The media plays a large role on the way we, a society as a whole, are influenced and think about responsibilities and roles of genders. As young children, we are still not sure of who we are and how we should act about certain topics. In order to ‘find ourselves,’ as young children, we look at things that are available to us. The television is found in every home and thus makes it one of the easiest ways for children to be influenced. This is not to say that the adult female population is not influenced as well. Adult females are seeking more information on how they should be as a person in order to be accepted in society as an acceptable woman.
The media has several different aspects and tactics that impact gender roles. It has a way of impacting the emotions of men and women alike, as well as their view on their own gender and the roles they should carry out for the rest of their lives. By aiming toward emotions and personal feelings, the media is able to affect their being in a way that no other source of influence can.
According to the film, Miss Representation, the media “are shaping our society and delivering contents, but shaping children’s brains and minds (Newsom, 2011). Brooks and Hebert (2006) also discuss that “Much of what audiences know and care about is based on the images, symbols, and narratives in radio, television, film, music, and other media” (p. 297). The media is mostly governed by white men. “Women own only 5.8% of all television station and 6% of radio stations” (Newsom, 2011). “The limited employment of women in decision-making roles is the key element in understanding how gender inequality is woven into the media industry” (Watkins & Emerson, 2000, p. 155). Collins (1999) points out that elite groups manipulate controlling images that marginalize specific groups. As a result, girls and women are encouraged to achieve men’s ideals, impossible beauty standards; young men who are used to such models are judgmental toward real women (Newsom, 2011). Moreover, advertisers and marketers have had “dictated cultural norms and values” since the establishment of the Advertizing First Amendment Protection in 1976 (Newsom,
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.
It is shocking to see the digression in humanity’s morals and values over the past decade. As cliché as it sounds, the media is the center of it all. The way women are being represented, from our television sets, the radio, pornography and even art has pushed beauty to the top of the list of controversial and widely debated topics around the globe. “Whenever we walk down the street, watch TV, open a magazine or enter an art gallery, we are faced with images of femininity,” (Watson and Martin).
Throughout society, men and women have been expected to live by guidelines consisting of media generated ideas and ways of living out life. Both men and women’s thinking process are being altered the negative effects of society’s mass media. For both sexes, this repeating negative exposure causes a constant downfall in self-image and creates media influenced decisions that lead to unhealthy lifestyles. The media effects the thinking process of both men and women in negative ways therefore media needs to be heavily regulated.
According to a report by ZenithOptimedia, people spend more than an average of 490 minutes of their day consuming some form of media or text (Karaian). In a society that’s driven primarily by the media, we as consumers have been constantly exposed, yet desensitized, to the various perspectives and theoretical frameworks that media has historically illustrated and produced. The most common concepts that are explored involve ideas of race, heteronormativity, whiteness and white privilege, female objectification, class identity, and gender. Each perception is complex and is seen differently in media depending on who you are and the way that you see the world through the lenses created by your own beliefs and culture.
With the growth of magazine popularity, both online and in print, youth around the world are exposed to the ideas of gender expression, identities, and roles. However, with society’s influence, the spread of heteronormative, cisgender, and white ideals have been placed as top priority. After examining men’s fashion magazine, Gentlemen Quarterly, I discovered that much of their magazine revolved around the typical wealthy, white, straight, and able-bodied male. Despite their attempts to branch out to other minority groups, they are unsuccessful in breaking out of their classic audience. GQ’s website is built to automatically draw their viewers into articles, flashing large pictures and headlines immediately into their audience’s face. Most photos
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.
For example, In 2011, the Commission of the image of women in the media(Commission sur l’image des femmes dans les medias) in France, published an annual report. The commission was organized in 2009, in the social context that the women are not well represented in the media. The report tried to figure out the percentage of female ‘experts’ in the media including radio and TV. According to the report, 80% of the experts who appeared in the media were male. Considering the fact that the casting process is totally dependent on the decision of the production and their idea of ‘who is more likely to appear as serious and trustful person’, the result is quite shocking. It shows that the image of female in the media is rather a testifier or a victim, than an expert. The social position of women has been significantly improved in last hundred years, but how media treat them has not been pulled out from the traditional-patriarchal view point. This could be very dangerous because mass-media is accessible for people of all social classes and age groups, and for the most of t...
This paper aims to examine how gender differences are manifested in linguistic behavior. It focuses on the way men and women speak rather than that they are spoken about. Their speech differences in politeness, interaction, style and confidence are socialization practices which connote the power inequality between the two sexes. Examples of genderlects will be presented, and possible explanations from different perspectives will be evaluated before making a reasonable conclusion on the issue.
Gender stereotyping has been ongoing throughout history. The media has been distorting views by representing gender unrealistically and inaccurately. It created an image of what "masculinity" or "femininity" should be like and this leads to the image being "naturalized" in a way (Gail and Humez 2014). The media also attempts to shape their viewers into something ‘desirable’ to the norm. This essay will focus on the negative impacts of gender-related media stereotypes by looking at the pressures the media sets on both women and men, and also considering the impacts on children.