How Hegemonic Masculinity Has Set Ideas Of Gender Roles Essay

The media produces double standards by representing the act of domestic violence among athletes differently based on the gender of the perpetrator or person committing the crime. Hegemonic masculinity can best be described as the dominant, privileged, and often invisible category of men at any point in history. In gender studies, hegemonic masculinity refers to the belief in the existence of a culturally normative ideal of male behavior. Hegemonic masculinity posits that society strongly encourages men to embody this kind of masculinity. Hegemonic masculinity is said to be marked by a tendency for the male to dominate other males and subordinate females. A case can be made for domestic violence cases in sports. Domestic violence can be used as a way for a male to show his dominance over females and show other males not to mess with them. Men may come off as more masculine if they beat on another girl. For females in sports it has been said that a more masculine side is being brought out through competition. Even though I believe that domestic violence is portrayed differently compared to male cases, females show their masculinity in different ways. Hegemonic masculinity can be shown in females and when they use their anger in a violent way it is a way to show that they can dominate other male or females and make them seem more superior compared to other around them. In my paper I will be looking at how media effects domestic violence and how it portrayed differently.

Finally, Dyer talks about muscularity and what this means for male and female activity. Muscularity is the sign of power and achievement. He states, “The muscle man is the end product of his own activity of muscle-building” (62). The male body shows that he worked hard, or in some cases not at all, to achieve the appearance that he has. However, pertaining to the female body, even though she may have worked hard to get the shape she’s in its seen as “something that has been done to the woman” (Dyer 62). The male goes and actively seeks to achieve muscles,

In ancient Greece, body building was almost exclusively for males. Men are the greater physical specimen so in the Greek’s minds, they should be the ones sculpting their bodies and taking pride in their appearance. Women were pushed to the background and were seen to have other responsibilities than athletics. In today’s world women are considered equals. Anything a male can do a woman can also do if she pleases and this includes bodybuilding. Giraldi touches on this when describing how women in the gym will cause men to elevate what they are doing (Giraldi 61).Women are seen in gyms worldwide now and participate in all Olympic sports that males do. This is definitely a change that has occurred over time and is for the

In order to understand what the ideal male body form is, a student was conducted to research the body image concerns of college men. It found that men without eating disorders preferred the V-shaped body whereas men with eating disorders desired the “lean, toned, thin” shape. Surprisingly, all men in the study picked the full-chested, thin-waisted body shape, as well as the look of strength and agility which is explained through Lipman, “the early American value system, which stressed the attributes of physical prowess for men, made sense then because it was anchored in and relation functionality to the frontier and rural society” (Anderson 63). In other words, this old concept of masculinity displays a cultural setback where physical prowess is not a requirement for success in today’s society. An example of media playing the institutionalized male body ideals is through men’s magazines which emphasizes activity, movement, and physical prowess. As a result, men look at their chest, arms, stomach, and legs to try to see muscularity. If physical prowess is desired, being underweight is a much greater taboo than being comfortable with being overweight or within their ideal weight. “Only 77% of underweight men liked their appearance as opposed to 83% of underweight women” (Anderson

Women in our society today are often hypersexualized and seen as less than men. Society perpetuates the myth that the female body is weak (Ros & Basow, 2004). The Body Issue magazine; helps in promoting the change in viewpoints of our women and does a good job challenging the assumptions of the idealized feminine form. I believe that The Body Issue and the image I chose is a source of empowerment for physically active women and non-active women alike. The women themselves see this photoshoot as empowering. For example, Nzingha Prescod states, “I'm so proud of how hard I've worked for this body. It's the most genuine display of my dedication. I hope my feature encourages women everywhere to embrace muscles and strength and to love their bodies.”

I believe that we need to understand women’s experiences in the gym as they are affected the most by gender stereotypes and that is what led me to research this

“In contemporary media and culture, women’s and men’s social desirability and gender have often been defined in terms of their bodies. For women, this has often involved comparing themselves to and even replicating the ‘‘thin ideal’’, altering their bodies to heighten perceived sexuality or youthfulness, or conforming to traditional definitions of femininity including qualities such as submissiveness or sentimentality. For men, gender-based definitions of success frequently revolve around presenting or

Take a look around your local gym and you might expect to find women teaching yoga or cardio. Today, that stereotype is changed. Female masculinity is no longer becoming a taboo in the 21st century. Female bodybuilders have shown that not only a man can pick up a dumbbell. Additionally, we are used to seeing males with toned muscles and cutting definition, and it's shocking to see females with the same dimensions. Top 12 female bodybuilders: Irene Anderson, Kim Chizevsky-Nicholls, Pulang Kerja, Nicole Bass, Yaxeni Oriquen, Debbie Laszewski, Joanna Thomas, Alina Popa, Tammy Jones, Helle Trevino, Tina Chandler, and lastly airily Kyle have proved that women can accomplish the male

Thompson, J. Kevin. 1999. Body image, bodybuilding, and cultural ideals of muscularity. Mesomorphosis 30: 1-6.

In the first reading: Sports, Males and masculinities, Pringle (2007) analyses how the relationship is developed between sport, masculinities and gender relations. First, historically, modern sport developed in the 1800s in male only English public schools. In Western

Images portray her in a two piece bathing suit lifting men and heavy weights over her head, often while smiling. Physical Culture magazine named her “Miss Physical Culture.” Her column, “Barbelles,” provided women advice on how to achieve the level of strength and fitness they desired. She featured women who obtained their goals and gave advice on performing workout routines to achieve ideal results. In her column, she provided more advice about improving muscularity and strength than about weight-loss. However, Stockton’s most important asset was her beauty. She had to maintain standards of beauty and femininity to attain social acceptance as a female bodybuilder.

How is gender and gender roles socially constructed? Soulliere states that gender is a cultural creation that is frequently developed by and represented through popular cultural media such as advertisements, music, sports, and entertainment television (Soulliere 2006). The article “Wrestling with Masculinity: Messages about Manhood in the WWE” by Danielle M. Soulliere (2006), examines messages about manhood revealed by televised professional wrestling (Soulliere 1). Messages concerning masculinity and manhood were investigated and compared to the cultural version of masculinity (Soulliere 2006). Soulliere’s research proves that the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) depicts messages, which supports the dominant hegemonic form of masculinity (Soulliere 2006). To further grasp and understand Soulliere’s hypothesis, we must first examine her research methods and outcomes.

This physique is often achieved by engaging in a disciplined regimen consisting of heavy weight training and high caloric consumption in an effort to gain mass. In her article “Reading the Slender Body,” Susan Bordo describes the desire for the female body to not only be slender, but also toned and fabless during. Moreover, she argues that protruding bulges symbolize a deviant individual out of control while having muscle is a symbol of caring about one’s self (Bordo, 193). However, there is a delicate balance between fitness and femininity that influences disparities in the types of exercise modalities preformed by men and women within the fitness

Women and men react very differently when we see professional weight lifters of the different genders. When men see muscle men lifting huge weights over their heads and showing off muscles that seem to be ready to explode out of their bodies, they feel envious and dream of the respect they would earn if they could ever get to that level of “pumped up.”

Although, athletes are the role models the boys grow up playing sports but when they do not perform in an excellent or right way they are chided as girls in a away to help them perform better. The language that is in the media attributes and reinforces the dominant discourse that males are stronger than females. (Public research group, 2010). In addition, men are expected to have healthy strong bodies and simultaneously on the other hand isolate and seclude themselves from females as to not care how they look. Men that are obese are subjected through oppression as a result of the factor that they do not fit in the masculine stereotype of a muscle built body. Furthermore, young boys are taught this early and consequently reproduce this discourse to discriminate others in school that do not fit in to Western culture's ideology of masculinity. This discrimination of the obese instills a fear on the youth that to be fat is not ideal and is therefore seen in revulsion and hatred. Nevertheless, the discourse implies that genetics do not play a role and that every male can get this perfect body of masculinity in a sense. Therefore, a man would need to endure the journey for how ever long it takes to achieve this. In contrary, this is not the truth a man may go the gym everyday for a number of years and never achieve this form of masculinity because for their body type and genetics is impossible. Moreover, the stereotypes against overweight men at a first glance