Pop Culture And Gender Stereotypes

In Stephanie Hanes’ article “Little Girls or Little Women? The Disney Princess Effect,” the author discusses how young girls have the desire to act older than their age and fulfill the narrowing looks created by the world surrounding them. Supporting this claim is the 2010 American Psychological Association (APA) report on the sexualization of girls. It describes that a girl’s value comes from mostly sex appeal that’s seen in magazines, marketers, music lyrics, and on television (Hanes). Hanes’ use of case studies, statistics, research, and storytelling provides the uprising issue to the reader and gives her opposition to this subject matter.

Pop culture, what does this term even mean? It seems to be a word that contains subjects of media, social structure, and society as a whole. According to the dictionary, pop culture is defined as “cultural activities or commercial products reflecting, suited to, or aimed at the tastes of the general masses of people”. In the society we live in today, we are constantly surrounded by pop culture, either that is with television, magazines, different sources of social media and/or exposure to others. Due to pop culture being such a dominant contribution into our world today, it has effected many parts of society. The domination of social media has created idealistic views that are stressed upon female adolescents in particular. Upon media’s influence, traditional tactics and work have been modified in order to keep up with our technology oriented society. This alters the schools and education systems. Through the use of television, social media and other means of pop culture, serious study is necessary due to the negative effects it has on the younger generation and the effects it has for their futures.

Little girls have become infatuated with looking, acting and dressing like princesses. In “What’s Wrong With Cinderella?” Peggy Orenstein writes “There are now more than 25,000 Disney Princess items. ''Princess,'' as some Disney execs call it, is not only the fastest-growing brand the company has ever created; they say it is on its way to becoming the largest girls' franchise on the planet” (Orenstein). The author explains how enormous of a franchise Disney princess items have become. The author physically cannot hide from their products; they are virtually everywhere.” As my daughter pointed out Disney Princess Band-Aids, Disney Princess paper cups, Disney Princess lip balm, Disney Princess pens, Disney Princess crayons and Disney Princess notebooks -- all cleverly displayed at the eye level of a 3-year-old trapped in a shopping cart -- as well as a bouquet of Disney Princess balloons bobbing over the checkout line. The repetition was excessive, even for a preschooler” (Ornstein). The over saturation of Disney does not leave girls with many other choices, they are being forced fed a brand and ideology from a very young age. This could have the potential of taking a toll on how young girls grow into mature emotionally developed women. Not only is Disney ingeniously marketing these characters to young girls, but it has become prevalent in everyone’s mainstream lives. Peggy insists “I'd smiled politely every

Pop culture, or popular culture, is knowns as a term appeared in mid 20 century. It is defined as the categories of entertainment, politics, sports, fashion, technology, and have a way to influence a person's opinion to a certain topic.

Today popular culture has a substantial effect on our lives. It can affect what we wear, what music we listen to, or even how we behave. Many people decide what clothes to buy depending on what is in style or what celebrities are wearing. The same happens when people choose what movies to see or what music to download. While pop culture may seem harmless, it exposes people of all ages to sex, drugs, and violence. Children and teenagers all over the world are watching these shows or listening to these types of music. They take what they hear or see and develop bad habits or make poor decisions. Popular culture including movies, music, and franchises mostly has a negative effect on countries who import it.

Disney makes over $3 billion on their Disney Princess products every year and now have over 25,000 items in their princess collection (Orenstein 2). Disney has played a big role in shaping not only societal viewpoints on what young girls should like, but also what little girls believe they should enjoy as well. Gender stereotypes have been around for a long time, but now with technology advancements, such as media in western society is able to play a bigger than ever role in influencing people’s perspectives. Not only do we see gender roles and stereotypes in television shows, but also in advertisements and in children’s toys. Although many readers of Peggy Orenstein’s “What’s wrong with Cinderella” have argued that the princess culture is corrupting today’s young girls and making them more dependent on men, a closer examination shows that many girls grow out of the princess phase with no negative repercussions and choose whatever passions they want.

Gender stereotypes are everywhere. Even before we can understand what this means, people are constantly exposed to them through advertisements, toys, clothes, and the media including television shows and movies. To evaluate the prevalence of gender stereotypes in television programs targeted towards young children, I chose to watch four different shows called Phineas and Ferb, Little Einsteins, Horrid Henry, and Sofia the First. When picking what shows to watch, I intentionally selected at least one that looked targeted towards boys, another that appeared to be targeted towards girls, and finally one that seemed gender neutral. I also made sure to watch at least two episodes of each program to determine whether the themes I observed were

Little girls? Or little women? The “Disney Princess Effect”, an article written by Stephanie Hanes was published September 4, 2011 the CS Monitor. Girls growing up in today’s society are being stripped of their childhoods. With fictional figures to dream of being, young girls aren’t falling in love with the beauty of the stories but more so they assume that they don’t look good enough to be like the world adored princesses. The author wrote this article in response to the epidemic of young girls growing up too fast and the concern it leaves. Between the Finucane Theory, the “Hottie Mystique” and the media onslaught will all reveal the beginning to a much bigger problem that these Disney princesses are creating. The author contends that young girls are losing sight of their childhoods and are becoming sexually advanced too soon.

For thousands of years, established gender roles have been a part of our society. Women are commonly known as sensitive, emotional, or passive. On the contrary, men are described as rational, competitive, independent, or aggressive. Believing women are more emotional than men is stereotyping. However, the stereotype is not entirely untrue. Development of gender roles is often conditioned more by environmental or cultural factors than by hereditary or biological factors. The development of gender roles between men and women involves the inference of peer community of each gender, the communication style of male and female and the intimacy or connection level of men and women.

#1. After reading chapter one of the text book the thing that I came away with that surprised me the most was the information about the races listed on the United States Census survey. Even though I have filled out two of them in my nearly 40 years of life it never clicked that there were so few options to pick from. Working with the public has me interacting with people of innumerable racial backgrounds; for example, in a few years when the 2020 Census goes out to the, for example, numerous Indian-American (India born not American Indians) who frequent my place of business will have to select from, as the book says: “The US Census Bureau identifies five races: White, Black, Asian, American Indian, or Native Hawaiian” (Diversity and the College

Although Miranda and Charlotte end up with children, they, especially Charlotte, retain their feminist behaviors.

What young girl does not dream of becoming a princess and living in a castle happily ever after? Virtually every young girl identifies with princesses and has watched at least one Disney Princess movie. From the first movies of Snow White and Cinderella, to the later movies of The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, to the most current movie Moana, Disney Princess movies permeate not only the movie theaters, but also our culture. In fact, “becoming a princess is as easy as purchasing a tiara and hosting a princess-themed birthday party or buying a Halloween costume and playing pretend” (Garabedian, 2014, p. 23). Nonetheless, as declared by Princess Merida in the movie Brave, “there comes a day when I don’t have to be a princess. No rules, no expectations. A day where anything can happen. A day where I can change my fate” (Andrews & Chapman, 2012). In other words, does the life of a princess measure up to the expectations of little girls everywhere? The Disney Princess brand has grown incredibly popular, especially with young girls. In spite of this, the franchise has also become extremely controversial due to potential gender stereotypes in the films. “Gender is one of the most discussed topics in today’s society…[it] represents and also reproduces certain attributes, expectations and roles which are associated with male and female…influencing the views and opinions of future generations” (Maity, 2014, p. 31). Yet, is the Disney Princess brand harmful to young children due to gender stereotypes? Two essays that contemplate the Disney Princess brand and gender stereotypes with opposite viewpoints on this controversial issue are “Girls on Film: The Real Problem with the Disney Princess Brand” by writer Monika Bartyzel and “In Defense of Princess Culture” by writer and mother Crystal Liechty. However, Liechty’s essay “In Defense of Princess Culture,” is the most effective article in convincing the audience of her point of view due to the claim, support, warrant, language, and vocabulary employed.

Stereotypes have become a prevalent issue in our media. They, without our knowledge, prevent us from moving forward as human. In this essay, I will discuss the effects of stereotypes in media on gender roles, religion, and race.

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.

Society can put unrealistic expectations of reality into individuals from a very young age. As soon as a child can begin to comprehend what is going on around them, they are shown movies of perfect society’s and perfect marriage. So, as they grow older, this is what they expect life to be like. Then, when they finally reach a certain age they begin to wonder why life isn’t going the way they thought it was going to go. The picture that the media and movies portray of life and how one is supposed to look can make individuals put outrageous expectation on themselves in order to be “normal”. Nobody feels those expectations more than females growing up do. Women are oversexualized and kept inferior to their male counterparts and this can affect