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'Where Do Gender Roles Come From'

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Although nowadays there are many feminists against gender stereotypes, gender stereotypes still exist everywhere. It is hard for people to eliminate gender stereotypes overnight. Most people know that stereotypes are not true, but many still assume of roles based on gender. We may all be guilty of many gender stereotypes, such as assuming that men have to make money for supporting family, and women are supposed to be housewifes. In “ How Toys teach children stereotypical gender roles”, Denise Starr summarized traditional gender rules, which was “ Boys are doctors; Girls are nurses. Boys are football players; girls are cheerleaders. Boys invent thing; Girls use the things boys invent, Boys fix things; Girls need things fixed. Boys are presidents; …show more content…
In my experience, my parents taught me a lot of gender rules. I live with my elder brother who works in technology company. Our parents live in China, and they kept after me to do housework every week. Wonderingly, my parents never kept after my brother to do housework. I cleaned dust, wiped kitchen and cleaned up the house every week, but my brother never did housework. When I told my parents that he did nothing at home, my parents said it was ok because he is male, and I should do more housework because I am a girl. My parents’ attitude toward this taught me housework are girl’s responsibilities. Even though I felt unfair, felt angry, their reason “ because you are a girl” seems to make it sounds “persuasive” and “reasonable”. Like it said, parents can and do reinforce sexual …show more content…
Popular music video is present almost everywhere and it is easily available through the Internet. The style of music video is a sort of starting objectifying women. Music video tends to reinforce gender roles by potraying male as: adventurous, dominant, masculine, violent and tough; Whereas females were characterized as: weak, submissive, dependent, protected, and emotional. It was also noted that females were seminude or naked and they were more frequent to either began or received sexual advances than male in music videos. Music videos reinforce female shown as sex toys or objects, focusing on private parts of the body mainly and viewing female as insignificant. For example, The hottest music video “What do you mean” , which is the top 1 music on the Billboard hot chart, by Justin Bieber, reveals an example of gender stereotypes in a relationship between woman and man. This video describes women’s and men’s different behaviors in a relationship. Justin Bieber keeps asking the woman “what do you mean”, because the girl in the video always hides her feelings from Justin Bieber. From the beginning to the end, the girl is half-naked like a sex object, but Justin Bieber wears a white-shirt I can see from the lyrics “What do you mean? When you nod your head yes, but you wanna say no” demonstrating the gender stereotype that girl are like sex objects, satisfying boys’ all sexual

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