Gender Stereotypes in Popular Culture

Popular culture is more visible in our modern day society than ever before. Stereotypes (both good and bad) are being thrown around unfairly by those who aren't even educated about the topic. Ironically, our society continues to listen to these uneducated individuals and as a result, these individuals are having a large impact in the way society looks at certain topics. Let's not discard the simple fact that we too are guilty of throwing these unfair criticisms and stereotypes at individuals whom we disagree with. It is human nature to make assumptions about a person by the way they dress, talk, who they hang out with, and their characteristics. Popular culture has swept all over the globe and has had an effect in places like grade school to

For generations, cultural norms have significantly influenced male and female gender roles. Gender roles emphasizes that social and cultural influences are the main energy force for differentiating between gender roles and the root of division of labor based on sex. Furthermore, contingent to our social environmental conditions, we adapt to our cultural characteristics, learn accepted behaviors, and pass those characteristics from generation to generation. The following section looks to guide the reader through the biological and communal impacts of gender roles and discusses how it relates to America culture.

Gender has been a highly relevant topic of discussion in recent years, with more and more individuals being aware of the gender roles that society places on individuals. With education has come activism, and the question of how individuals perpetuate these roles. Women, in particular, have faced harsh criticisms based upon stereotypes placed on them. Essentially, there are four main ways that typical gender roles placed by society can be classified or broken down into. The first classification is based upon personality traits. When looking at the expected personality traits, in order to fit women should be meek and quiet, whereas men are supposed to be dominant. Seeing as this is the norm, outgoing women who go

As depicted in table 1 above, four students displayed consistent gender role beliefs across both the implicit and explicit measures, three of which were found to exhibit traditional and one student presented non-traditional. Although the results are predominantly consistent, the remaining student displayed non-traditional gender beliefs for the explicit measure and yet traditional gender role association for the implicit measure, suggesting incongruence between the two measures.

Stereotypes not only pertain to commercial television but are also found in music television clips. In a study done by Rita Sommers-Flanagan, John Sommers-Flanagan and Britta Davis exploring gender role and content analysis of music television (MTV) in 1993 “results included the following: men appeared nearly twice as often as women; men engaged in significantly more aggressive and dominant behavior; women engaged in significantly more implicitly sexual and subservient behavior; and women were more frequently the object of explicit, implicit, and aggressive sexual advances.” (Sommers-Flanagan, 1993) The woman has been degraded to the weak sexual objects with only the power of their sexuality, and the men remain the more dominant powerful gender.

Growing up as millennial in the 21st century I’ve got to experience some of the biggest cultural change yet to happen in the United States. Just in my 20 years here on Earth, I’ve experienced same-sex marriage becoming legal, transgender becoming more and more acceptable, pride parades, and so on. Despite going through these changes I believe our popular culture and entertainment are still fairly traditional and gender stereotypical. Movies and TV while I was growing up and still today are based on the traditional man and women together. Growing up one of my favorite TV shows was Hannah Montana which was a very stereotypical teenage show. As I got older more and more shows started to come out that broke the cultural norms such as Orange is the New Black.

Cecilia Ridgway, in “Framed by Gender: How Gender Inequality Persists in the Modern World,” holds that gender exists as an organizing social force. We value certain stereotypes of how people of a certain gender should act and incorporate these expectations into our social relations. Men, Ridgeway explains, are typically viewed as having more “competence, assertiveness, confidence, independence, forcefulness, and dominance” (Ridgeway, 2011) in social relations. Women, on the other hand, are viewed as valuing “emotional expressiveness, nurturance, interpersonal sensitivity, kindness, and responsiveness” (Ridgeway, 2011). According to Ridgeway, these gender stereotypes are basic knowledge in the contemporary United States and, therefore, are present in most social interactions.

The media plays one of the major roles in fueling this fear. By portraying horrifying scenes from around the world, the media introduces fear into “large populations, especially in countries where the average household watches television eight hours a day” (Beuhler n.p). The media seems to excel when covering conflict, especially when it comes to the Islamic world, which is filled with conflicts. The film industry has also been blamed for advancing Islamophobia by portraying Muslims and Arabs as the “bad guys” in Hollywood and Bollywood movies. Such movies influence how Muslims are viewed. The Hollywood film industry has defended itself by stating that they have avoided using Muslims as the villain since 2001. Similary, Bollywood, the Indian

In this society we have created two distinct worlds for men and women, we have jobs that are considered masculine roles and feminine roles, colors to be worn by either a man or woman, and even foods that are eaten by a specific gender. People who wish to step out of what society considers acceptable face the consequences. For example, in the work place women are often paid less than their equal men colleagues. There are two perspective that account for behavioral, personality, and cognitive differences between men and women. The first states that it’s due to the evolution of our psychological disposition during the primeval time and the other emphasizes the effect that social roles have both men and women. Although the two theories differ greatly, they both emphasize the adaptation that both men and women had to undergo in response to environmental factors.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Martin Luther King Jr’s ideology aligns deeply with my convictions. Justice for all is becoming the trademark of my generation and I wholeheartedly support our march toward equality. Any injustice is infuriating, but the lack of representation of minorities in media is an infraction that ignites genuine animosity within me. Inadequate representation negatively impacts the perception of minorities and harms individual minority youth.

By the time we start school, we begin to learn and gain intelligence of the world. But by

I have heard it said many times and by many women, "I wish that I were a man. Men have it so easy. . ." It is a statement which stems from the fear and anger that comes from so many years of oppression and abuse; a statement which stems from the pressure to meet the present impossible standards of beauty and bodily perfection. At times it seems to be an understandable statement to make. Admittedly, I have found myself wishing that very absurdity when the pressures of being a woman have seemed to be too much. But as I get older, and hopefully wiser, I am happy to say, and even very proud, that yes! I am a woman. It is a very exciting time for me as a young woman to watch the changes

There has not been a significant amount of studies done on the different sexes seeking help, nonetheless it is evidenced that women are most likely to seek and ask for help than men. The studies that have been conducted such as, cross-cultural studies, (Cohen, Guttmann, & Lazar, 1998; Moeller-Leimkuehler, 2002; Boldero & Fallon, 1995; Schonert-Reichl & Muller, 1996; Seiffge-Krenke & Shulman, 1990), empirical, observational studies, anthropological and ultimately research with adolescents have presented the same outcome of women asking for help sooner than men. Several different avenues of an individual’s life were used in the studies that were conducted such as one’s personal, medical and professional issues (Benesen & Koulnazarian, 2008).

What proposal can be done to alter the views of the multimedia towards it viewers? I propose a more direct step for one hiring a more diverse staff of these magazine corporations that models the actual face of America. Another would be to bring the relevance of the clearly unsaid problem in the fashion industry. Yes, it is an industry based off looks but I believe it poses a problem when the beauty is characterized as only one specific look. This is damaging in that to the public for instance young women who glorify the media and models themselves off what s seen as right they will lose self identity and will not recognize their own beauty. This leads to many alterations and is one of the reasons why plastic surgery and cosmetics is a booming industry .In 2011 alone America wasted 10.4 billion dollars on cosmetic surgery (Dicker).

It is known that society believes men to be more stable and rational in their actions and state of mind while women are believed to be emotional and irrational. Many people believe those qualities are biologically predetermined and it is a collective misconception that a person’s behavior differs based on their sex, when in fact it is based more so on their gender. To start off, look at the difference between sex and gender: “Sex refers to the biological categories of female and male categories distinguished by genes, chromosomes, and hormones,” “Gender refers to the social categories of male and female (Helgeson, 2016, p. 3).” With that said, the differences in social behavior are due to a person’s gender, not sex. Social behavior pertains to numerous different areas, but one area in particular is communication. Communication is the key component of social behavior because it is how a person interacts with the outside world, making it the defining theme of social behavior.