Media Shaping Gender Roles

Media enforces the social-cultural standards, which women are required to follow in order to look and behave in a manner that society considers acceptable. Newspapers, commercials, posters, magazines, fliers, reality shows, and cartoons only name a few of our everyday interaction with the media (Scholar, C.2011). However, these standards presented by media send a false perception of women, thus portraying women in a negative and disrespectful manner. Society views woman as mentally, morally, and physically inferior to men, and media is only highlighting this idea (Scholar, C.2011). In fact, media represents women in a stereotypical form of beauty, they display women as sexual objects, and create the illusion that women are ignorant.

Gender roles influence every characteristic and aspect of our life, from how we feel about ourselves to the degree of our contribution in social life. From a ripe young age, children become exposed to this type of gender bias right away, which can negatively affect and shape their whole outlook on life. Consequently, as these young boys and girls mature both physically and emotionally and move on into adulthood, they are, in essence, shoved into a world that impacts their attitudes and behaviors towards gender roles and stereotypes. These specific attitudes and behaviors first cultivate in the private doors of their parent’s house. Afterwards, these same biases become reinforced by the child’s peers, school experience (education), television viewing, and, of course, advertisements in the realm of print and television media. From the looks of it, it is near impossible, for children to not become subject to some degree of gender bias at an early age. As a child grows and develops, the stereotypes follow them into the next phases of their lives (i.e. adolescence) and then on into adulthood. Not only are these gender stereotypes destroying girls, they are also killing boys. The components of this essay will attempt to illustrate how advertising in print and television helps to perpetuate gender stereotypes in our world. Along with that, one must ask the question of how much harm these negative biases in gender roles truly affects the minds of men, women, and young children.

Advertisements, movies, TV shows, and other such things that consumers and viewers look at set a certain standard for society. They tell society to look a certain way and act a certain way. People don’t see a problem with messages that the media puts out, but it is a problem, especially when it affects people's self-esteems, labels people, and creates stereotypes about class and gender. Jean Kilbourne talks about one of these standards in her text “Two ways a woman can get hurt”: Advertising and Violence. Kilbourne focuses on gender norms in society, and how advertisements portray them. bell hooks a cultural critic, scholar, and prolific writer, author of Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor has similar views but she focuses on class, and how society represents the different classes in media, such as in movies and tv shows. These points can be seen in many tv shows and movies. Gossip Girl, for example, is a tv drama that attracts young adults, that shows the division between classes. Gossip Girl is about a group of teenagers who live in the upper East side of Manhattan, New York. The main characters Serena, Blair, Nate, and Chuck are all very rich. Then there is Dan who is also a main character and Jenny his little sister, that are considered to be poor. It is very obvious from the beginning how different they are from their classmates from the beginning of the show. It is seen in the way they dress, do their hair, their hobbies, where they live, and how they

Gender roles are the set of characteristics a gender role should have. Every gender should act like their own "kind." A man should have masculine attributes and a female should have feminine attributes; at least that's what the media tells us. They influence ideas that a man should act like one and a woman like a woman. Huffington Post writer, Warren J. Blumenfeld, discusses the ways gender roles affect society. He recognizes how these gender roles are presented before us and we don't take them into consideration. Commercials created by the La Quinta Inns and Depend Shields and Guards for Men influence the ideas of gender roles. Media has a huge role in creating social standards, on the grounds that different types of media are available all over in society. Gender roles, for instance, exist singularly on the grounds that society accepts them, yet sustained by the media constantly. Media has infiltrated society with the mentality that everyone should follow their gender role.

The media must have some sort of effect on people and the portrayal of other women always resonated with me. I know that there are many people who claim that unrealistic appearances in things like magazines cause an increase in eating disorders and low self esteem. The constant strive for perfection has been evolving due to digital enhancements with programs such as Photoshop or others that assist with photo editing. It is really easy to make things appear completely changed from their natural looks. A lot of places are requiring acknowledgement of alterations via disclaimers on advertisements. This prompts a debate for who has to concede between what is considered artistic freedom and dangerous content. Technology also contributes to the amount of media exposure people have now through the Internet and social media. These are considered staples in the lives of many impressionable young people, so it could add pressure to accept a new normal.

You see things in shows like girls playing with their barbies wearing cute pink outfits while the boys roughhouse in the background playing sports. The media has a very compelling influence on today's society, its shapes our perspective on life without us realizing it, all the while altering our behaviors and attitudes towards social norms. One example is If teenagers see unrealistic ‘thin’ or ‘muscular’ body types often enough, it can have an impact on their body image and dieting behavior. But it doesn't start with the media, of course, it starts with our parents  and their own gender orientations. As we grow up, other groups influence

Gender roles has been the root of multiple mental health issues, particularly depression, and so the portrayal of both genders should be improved through media as this is how gender norms would usually form.

Gender representation in the media is a big issue when it comes to African American man committing crimes on the news, but rarely hear about other ethnicity in the media. The media try to persuade other ethnic groups that African American males are aggressive towards others. They label black people as being violent and lazy, but in society that is based off of physical characteristics and our skin color. Racism played a big part in society and caused others to judge African American by their skin tones. We should all be treated with compassion and not hatred.

AP) The paper explores the vast distinction in the qualities of men and women as dictated in the media. Media has always portrayed the sexes in very diverse manners. Men, the chosen dominate gender, per Feminity and Masculinity “our society is made up of many false fineries and is [Consistently] described as masculine and have qualities, including being dependent, Males are described as masculine and have qualities, including being independent, strong, self-confident and aggressive, while females are described […] with words such as dependent, weak, self-critical and passive’. This bias and largely unsupported view of gender has played a significant role in the way society views gender and the way women view themselves. Media’s obvious unequal

This source is about the gender roles in America. It discusses the different ways that the media influences gender stereotypes in women. It compares the present to the future. According to this paper, women are often sexualized and put in proactive clothing. Women are portrayed as nonprofessionals, homemakers, wives, and parents. This benefits my paper because this shows how the media has a negative effect on the stereotypes of women. It supports the theory that the media is one of the main causes of the negative stereotype and traditional gender roles.

Dozens of action movies are produced every year by Hollywood. Not to mention how widely most violent scenes such as guns and kills are accepted in most of them. Although most may view them only as entertainments, it is undeniable that the overexposed ideas of power and dauntless from not only the movies but our daily media had slowly changed our social norms toward gun and violent. Over 900 mass shootings, defined as having four or more fatalities in one incident by CNN, has happened in less than three years since 2013. When in fact, as TV news and newspapers intended to inform titles like “a student opened fire” or “people are shot dead in a historic black church”, almost none marked out the issue on gender or men in the titles. African-Americans, psychotics, Mexicans, and immigrants are more often to be written in contents of violence, whereas only few articles wrote about white men, who also build up a big part of our masculinity society. In the past, violence came from anger in specific reasons; today, violence has become a way to represent our toughness and masculinity. Not only did our popular culture lead us to a narrower idea of distinct gender behaviors, such as men to be brave and women to be sensitive, our media provides us even more contents toward normalizing what should be violent and incorrect.

This paper addressed the issue of media and gender roles, more precisely how media’s portrayals affected gender identity by perpetuation of traditional gender roles. The aim of this research was to capture the different perceptions of Mauritians’ adolescents and young adults regarding the impact of media’s portrayals. The foregoing chapters examined the role that media plays in shaping one’s gender identity and demonstrated how stereotypical portrayals in the media had an impact on their respective gender. A review of earlier literature was presented concerning the effects of media’s portrayal on gender perception and gender roles. The research questions were examined through a qualitative approach in the form of semi structured interviews

Why cannot female characters be stronger? The role of media is representing the social status that reflects the actual situation of the female in society’s different aspects. However, female characters do not have enough representation because males take most of the important roles in different kinds of media. Female characters are always represented as one-sided and more reliant on male characters. Even though there is a trend of misrepresentation of females characters, but there is more and more shows have a better portrayal of feminism over time. The portrait of females in TV shows is changing. Because women’ dreams are no longer just being taken care of the family in the real lives, but also

Gender inequality is the idea or situation that men and women are not equal, and is a problem in countries around the world. I will be focusing my research on this type of inequality in Canada. It is an issue for both men and women that they are exposed to at birth, is fed by the media as a teen, and continues in their everyday life as an adult. My approach to this issue is examining three topics that are related to my assignment: childhood, everyday life, and the media. Acts of gender inequality can be found within these broad points that negatively or positively affect males and females. For childhood, there will be toys, clothing, and child advertising. In everyday life, I will cover the workplace, travel, and costs. Media will include celebrities, television/movies, and social media. My thesis statement is: gender inequality is evident in many stages of human development through childhood, teenage years, and adulthood. Gender inequality is a real thing and it is proven in childhood, as a teenager, and adult.

As a Communication major, I spend a lot of time studying the human communication process, which is the exchange of verbal and nonverbal messages between a receiver and sender. This communication process does not only apply to face-to-face interactions but also includes mass media, rhetorical, and technological communication. Through these various forms of communication, the sender not only expresses his/her message but also expresses power hierarchies about race, gender, and sexuality that are present in society. Mass media has a significant impact on socializing gender roles and perpetuating gender stereotypes, and to prove that, I am analyzing mass media messages, such as television shows, movies, and advertisements.