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Gender Stereotypes : Masculinity And Femininity

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In children films, they makes assumptions of what male and female roles should be. It teaches kids early on that this is how you should act if you fall into a certain gender role. These films reinforce our cultural definition of how we as a society defines masculinity and femininity. It is not necessarily a right thing. But the idea of what a male and female characteristics should have and how they should act is so tightly bound to our western views that it is hard to not have stereotyped gender roles. It is an awful truth, but it needs to be said that the influence of gender roles as a result, influences what happens in children’s movies. It is inevitable to not have stereotype gender roles in our society, because it is a fault that comes with having any type society. We as an advanced westernized civilization have a very different definition of gender roles and what it means to be masculine and feminine. In the article. “Gender Stereotypes: Masculinity and Femininity” we as a culture define femininity as “women being passive, dependent, pure, refined and delicate” , but masculinity as men beginning “active, independent, coarse, and strong” . Culture dictates characteristics of what we associate with each gender. For example in matrilineal societies like the Khasi of Meghalaya in India, the women in the family are more dominant and the men are weaker. Also other cultures acknowledge multiple gender identities, like cross-gender working roles, transvestism, associations
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