Star Wars: Gender Stereotypes

Gender is a sociological idea, in which it is not based on biology. While there is some biological differences between the sexes, the “meaning” of being male or female is based on social norms. Like race, these “biological” differences provided a system of enabling inequality between the sexes. History offers many examples of the gender norms over time. Women, for centuries, are few as the homemakers and often viewed as intelligent. Despite living in the twentieth century with greater equality, one does not need to go far to see how society and media influence our perception of gender. Advertisements in various media persuade its audience to buying their products. However, the means of attracting and persuading the audience can have underlying messages. Even in entertainment for young girls these underlying messages are prevalent. One example is the popular film, The Little Mermaid, in which the main protagonist is a young female. The protagonist gave up her identity to satisfy her lover. Even traditional gender roles are at work; the film showed young girls that to be happy and successful one had to find a husband and must relinquished one’s identity (Wood 1994). The generalized perception of male and female are polar opposites. Males are viewed as masculine, strong, authoritative, powerful, and devoid of emotions. Females are viewed as beauty, fragile, nurturing, emotional and sole purpose is to please men. These ideas can lead to sexism, which can have negative effects on

The splitting of products into two genders stemmed from fiscally conscious businesses; those who had two products to sell to different people made more money than those who sold only gender neutral clothing, razors, and drinks. In modern times, almost everything in the media and in advertisements is biased based on gender. Ads for fragrance are no longer equitable; they are for cologne and perfume separately. As the businesses made money, a latent consequence arose. Those who grew in the days of binary gender products and segregated items became socialized to fit what was advertised. Boys targeted by monster truck commercials became conditioned to believe that they could only play with monster trucks and should compete with their friend’s monster trucks. Girls became conditioned to believe that dollhouses and horses were the only toy for them. These influences from the media have affected gender socialization, relationships, and expectations throughout the life course of almost every American.

Kids represent an important population to marketers because they influence their parents’ buying decisions and are adult consumers of the future. Toy manufacturers are biased toward male gender toys rather than both genders. This effect on movies make children want to favor the movies and possibly buy merchandise of the movie. An article by the Newsela staff, “Many people have been asking why toy stores that stock “Star Wars” toys do not have Rey toys. ,” explores how the movie Star Wars “Force Awakens”, the heroine’s toys’ were missing from stores.

Sweet uses the Sears catalog ads of 1975 where she deduced that just two percent of toys were market as either boys or girls but in 2012 in a study that Miss Sweet co-authored all toys in the Disney store website were labeled that

Advertising regularly uses gender roles to promote products. Gender-role stereotyping has been a prominent subject in advertising and throughout the media. It is the concept that gender stereotypes influence and reinforce stereotypical values in society, which can lead to negative consequences, particularly for men. As for advertising effectiveness, research shows that stereotypes can be supportive or detrimental, depending on several factors, such as the gender attitudes of the audience.

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.

Today in the late 1990’s we can not escape advertising it bombards us from all types of media and every aspect of our lives. It is a multibillion-pound industry that stereotypes genders and tells us what we could become if we use certain products.

Women are used in the media as decoration objects, and they are often sexualized on their appearance. The media uses this representation of women as a way to sell beauty products: skin care, body care, and hair care. This creates certain expectations of what a typical woman should be. Women according to media assumptions should be well maintained and beautiful. The media also interprets women mainly in home setting taking care of family life. Therefore, products used in housework are mainly aimed towards women. For example, laundry supplies, dishwashing liquid, and vacuums. The #1 American Target Advertisement used this type of assumption when they put all of the cleaning supplies in the woman’s cart instead of the man’s

She backs up that statement by providing the static fact that in 1975, “less than 2% of toys were explicitly marketed to either boys or girls.” She dives deeper into how gender stereotypes and ‘gender norms’ are prevalent in present day society by explaining how marketing plays an influence on society, especially the children. According to the BBC documentary The Men Who Made Us Spend, children now are being targeted as mini consumers and that the average British child sees 10,000 adverts a year! Kessel also claims that advertisements on children’s channels are the “most explicitly gendered thing you’ve ever seen’ and that in the advertisements involving girls, the girls are seen “in a whirl of pink and high-pitched voices” whereas the advertisements involving boys, the boys are seen “[in a whirl of] blue with a backdrop of angry guitar music.” By evaluating how marketing influences children to gender stereotype, she was able to strengthen her argument.

Making toys that are for all genders is something that many stores and toy companies are still trying to adapt to. Many toy manufacturers are promoting gender-biased toys.Merchandisers still do not understand that it’s not just girls who want a female character as a toy. There should be more toy companies that should try to make toys that are not specific to one gender because not every girl wants a barbie for a toy and not every boy wants a car as a toy to play with. More toy manufacturers should not promote gender-biased toys and make toys for every gender because many kids have different interests. In the article “Asleep at the switch? “Force Awakens” heroine missing from toy line” explores the idea that the new movie of “Star

For instance, half a century ago, commercials portrayed women as housewives while men worked to support the family. Today, women are portrayed as having very different roles. Reebok’s campaign for a women’s product line reversed gender roles by having women watch a football game on television while the men cleaned up (Sheehan, 2013). While this campaign was designed to make fun of gender roles, it could have an effect on changing viewers minds about stereotypes (Sheehan, 2013.) Two varied

Furthermore, Gender as a representative kind of culture stereotypes, it strongly influences people’s perspective of others, especially when lots information has been limited, for example, in the advertisement, the audience only have a few minutes to engage with it and it normally has no time to explain the issue of gender itself. In other words, when people meet new friends at the first time, they always make a precision of that person based on their characteristics, especially visual features. For instance, if a man seems full of muscle and powerful, then he will be defined as masculinity. Therefore, advertising often is critiqued as controversial of gender because it mainly expresses ideas and values visually, and gender is the most popular

Besides that, I will also be looking out for writing in the magazines’ editorial content that suggest gender stereotype. Lastly, ads will be looked as the type of product and lifestyle associated with said product that is being depicted may show gender stereotypes.

The roles of males and females in society have significantly changed, as opposed to the predominant roles in our history. In the modern culture of today, women have begun to break out of the mold that which society has placed her in. This much can’t be said when it comes to modern gender representation in mass media advertising. It can be safe to state that woman are seen as sexual, fragile, exotic—whereas men are portrayed as tough, in control, and aggressive. This trend can be one seen as an inhibitor to the advancement of our culture, because especially for women, it is hard to pull away from the stereotypes that are continuously represented. As examples of the given trend, the following

How women are perceived by others, and how women perceive themselves, impacts their leadership roles in the work place. Stereotypes and gender biases are themes women have been dealing with for centuries. How women are perceived by social medial and television have been influencing how they are treated by men, and how they view themselves when it comes to taking a leadership role in their organization. According to Omega Institute (2012), “The rapidly shifting landscape of new media and technology, including reality television and celebrity culture, continue to reinforce gender stereotypes” (p. 1). This leads to men still growing up viewing women as home makers versus bread winner. With more women entering leadership roles in the work place they lack the respect from men due to how these men have grown up to know the typical role of a man and woman. Men tend to feel belittled due to the gender stereotypes seen on television, and this leads to women struggling to succeed as a leader with the lack of support from their male counterparts. Lack of confidence with women in the workplace is also influenced and effected by how women are perceived in social media and television. According to Steele (2005), “Exposure to stereotypic commercials persuade women to avoid leadership roles” (p. 276). As young women grow up seeing the typical gender stereotypes they lack ambitions to break the mold and