Gender Stereotyping
Friday, December 2, 2011




Above is a small clip of the documentary “What a Girl Wants” where girls between the ages of 10 and 15 talk about what they see in the media and their interpretations. A lot of what they talk about is music video and over sexualization of the female artists. Most of these young girls are aware that sex sells, and believe that to fit in they need to have sex too. These girls can grow up with the pressure of maturing too quickly and thinking that they need to follow what the media wants them to do in order to fit in. This is where the stereotype towards women comes into place. Women tend to be portrayed more negatively than males. Males usually are portrayed as strong and brave while women are mainly seen as sex objects. According to Jennifer Stevens Aubrey’s article “Check That Body! The Effects of Sexually Objectifying Music Videos on College Men’s Sexual Beliefs” she says, “exposure to music videos where female artists engage in the sexual objectification of their bodies may prime a schema of women as sexual objects.” (363) Women try to not to live up to these expectations. Throughout the years there has been progress towards the preference of how women would like to be represented. According to Joke Hermes in a conference proceeding, “While gender stereotyping may be greatly irritating to many women, it has not stopped a sizable group of women and girls from gaining more and more powerful and influential positions.” (61) Some of the younger generation of girls are having trouble distinguishing what they should be doing and what the media wants them to do. Other women are embarking on a mission in order to expel these thoughts from girls by working hard in order to achieve job positions that are usually thought to be male jobs. (That’s right ladies, no promiscuous behavior needed!) The portrayal can be changed. “Democracies after all need a pluralist public sphere in which stereotyping will hurt less because it comes from different directions and targets all sorts of groups.” (61)
posted by Erika at 5:47 PM |

0 Comments:
<< back home

Post a Comment