...this essay I plan to explore the meanings that are found within the concepts of gender and sexuality and the presentation to which they are given in all types of visual culture. I wish to look into the reasons behind the current stereotypes of gender and sexuality which are used in day to day life. The origins of such clichés and the reason why stereotypes are so heavily used in visual culture, to try and understand the disadvantages and advantages they bring to the media. I will begin by trying to give an explanation of the definition of the terms, gender, sexuality and visual culture. Gender is often depicted to a simple non-complex term which is based upon an individual’s biological sex. Thus presenting the theory that the sex of an individual will biologically predetermine their mannerisms and actions; behaviours that are associated with being male or female. Although it is necessary to understand that there are differences between men and women, to assume that all behaviour can be categorised as male or female could be considered to be ignorant. In more recent times gender has become less fixated upon the biological sex of the person and is more determined by the individual themselves (Kirsch, 2000). Sexuality is the term used to demonstrate the type of person an individual is sexually attracted to and would like to pursue. The idea of sexuality is divided into three types’ heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality. Heterosexuality defining those who are attracted to...
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...American Portrayal in Media As the day progresses into the late evening hour most of America sits in front of their televisions impatiently waiting to watch their favorite shows. From prime time television to viral videos on YouTube, media has become one of the most influential areas of life. The clothes we wear, slogans we say, and actions we portray are all influenced by media. For example, in 2012 “Ain’t nobody got time for that” became a popular slogan which transcended from a news interview that went viral. Although the slogan was catchy, it became famous more so for the way it was presented. The interviewee was an African American female who was a victim of a house fire. With the female being very passionate and animated while speaking in an urban accent, it provided for great entertainment. Sadly, that news interview lacked the appropriate representation of African Americans. The way media portrays a certain message “can have an inordinate influence on the public’s perception of blacks” (Holt 6). Audiences have been a witness to negative portrayal of African Americans since the days of “blackface”, where Caucasian American actors painted their faces black to depict African Americans. According to blog author Michelle Whalen, “now, more than ever, images of African Americans are transcending racial stereotypes and forging ahead into the fight for equality” (1). In the past two decades, media has been successful in providing positive progression in the portrayal of African...
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...they do, and magazines and television advertisements are constantly telling women how they too can be “beautiful” by selling them weight loss products, exercise programs, and other image enhancers. The constant exposure to the media’s version of beautiful is not something that is often thought of as negative. However, their portrayal of what is beautiful has become distorted over the years, to the point where achieving this “thin-ideal”, which will be defined later, is nearly impossible for women if done through healthy means. Because of this, many women develop body dissatisfaction, which can lead to serious and dangerous consequences, such as the development of eating disorders, in order to be “beautiful”. While there are many factors that can be linked to eating disorders, research has found that the media’s influence on society’s portrayal of extremely thin females as the ideal body is directly correlated to the increase in body dissatisfaction, eating disorders and other harmful conditions found in women. By analyzing this from a feminist perspective, it can be argued that not only does the media’s influence on the idealization of thinness effect females physical and mental health negatively, but it also acts as reinforcement for the patriarchal culture prevalent in today’s society. There is a wide range of eating disorders, ranging from minor to severe. Body dissatisfaction, which is “a psychiatric condition in which the affected person suffers from a flawed perception that...
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...successful mother, I constantly heard about the struggle women continuously face in the workforce. My mother, having outstanding credentials, constantly reiterated to us how she had to knock down some barriers due to her sex. Because of her female empowering approach of raising her daughters, I read many books growing up about prominent women of our time and of years before. I never truly observed the misogynistic instances she told us about until I matured and reached high school. During my senior year of high school, I elected to take AP Government. During the year, we closely examined the Primary elections for the 2008 Presidential campaign. Over the course of the year we discussed the importance...
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...C H A P T E R 7 Gender and Advertising How Gender Shapes Meaning The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, “It’s a girl.” —Shirley Chisholm Men are dogs and women are cats. Women are from Venus and men are from Mars. Writers, filmmakers, psychologists, and advertisers all have used the idea that men and women are different to develop stories, create conflict, and provide persuasive imagery. Not only do advertisers view men and women differently, but men and women also bring different perspectives to advertising. Thus, we can assume that men and women create dif-ferent meanings from the advertisements they see. Gender roles in our society have changed dramatically since the 1950s, and portrayals of men and women in advertising have been researched since nearly the same time. Researchers have consistently sought to evaluate these roles to examine whether advertising has kept up with societal changes. In this chapter, we examine the different ways men and women view advertising and mes-sages, as well as some of the ways that advertising portrays gender roles today. The last several decades have seen changes in the role of women in society, both as those who earn money and those who spend money. In 1940, women comprised about 20% of the workforce in the United States, while today that percentage reaches 50% (U.S. Department of Labor, 2000). In addition, the family structure in the United States has changed: smaller...
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...Women, Girls and the Media 18 August 2014 The Disney Princess Effect on Young Girls and Their Gender Role Perception The Disney Corporation has been around since 1937 when it released the first Disney Princess movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Since then, millions of young girls have fallen in love with these characters and often see them as role models. From the dresses to the tiaras, the beauty to the fairy tale, Disney Princesses have a direct effect on young girls and their behavior. The media has been a powerful resource through which many young girls develop their identity and come to understand gender roles in society. Research indicates that watching televised gender portrayals has an effect on individuals’ gender based attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors (Mastro & Morawitz 131). These are the attitudes and beliefs that young girls who watch Disney princess films would inherit. Girls enjoy watching these films and see the beautiful characters overcome difficult trials, as well as fall in love with a handsome prince in the end. The overall message is not a realistic one, leaving many girls feeling self conscious and unhappy. The idea that beauty equals good and ugly equals evil can negatively impact the way a girl looks at herself or others. Girls will ultimately learn that what is beautiful is good. Snow White and Cinderella were attractive and charismatic while the witch and two stepsisters were unattractive and vile. And in the end, the princesses...
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...Corporation We posited that media images of men influence the gender role attitudes that men express soon after exposure to the images. A total of 212 men (87% European American, 7% Asian or Asian American, 3% African American, and 3% other) viewed magazine advertisements containing images of men that varied in terms of how traditionally masculine vs. androgynous they were and whether the models were the same age or much older than the viewers. Men who had initially been less traditional espoused more traditional attitudes than any other group after exposure to traditionally masculine models, although they continued to endorse relatively nontraditional views after exposure to androgynous models. These findings suggest that nontraditional men's gender role attitudes may be rather unstable and susceptible to momentary influences such as those found in advertising. Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1997 Plenum Publishing Corporation In the average American household, the television is turned "on" for almost seven hours each day, and the typical adult or child watches two to three hours of television per day. It is estimated that the average child sees 360,000 advertisements by the age of eighteen (Harris, 1989). Due to this extensive exposure to mass media depictions, the media's influence on gender role attitudes has become an area of considerable interest and concern in the past quarter century. Analyses of gender portrayals have found predominantly stereotypic portrayals of dominant males and nurturant...
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...Headnote This two-part exploratory study utilized a social cognitive theory framework in documenting gender portrayals in teen movies and investigating the influence of exposure to these images on gender-based beliefs about friendships, social aggression, and roles of women in society. First, a content analysis of gender portrayals in teen movies was conducted, revealing that female characters are more likely to be portrayed as socially aggressive than male characters. Second, college students were surveyed about their teen movie-viewing habits, gender-related beliefs, and attitudes. Findings suggest that viewing teen movies is associated with negative stereotypes about female friendships and gender roles. Research examining the effects of media exposure demonstrates that media consumption has a measurable influence on people's perceptions of the real world, and, regardless of the accuracy of these perceptions, they are used to help guide subsequent attitudes, judgments, and actions. For example, these results have been yielded for viewing media representations of race,1 the mentally ill,2 and the elderly.3 Past research additionally indicates that watching televised gender portrayals has an effect on individuals' real-world gender-based attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.4 Based on this research, and the tenets of social cognitive theory, it would be expected that consumption of teen movies would have an analogous influence on audience members' gender-based attitudes and beliefs...
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...The media, politicians and religious leaders encouraged this idealized middle-class life, which led to increasing numbers of women who stopped their own lives early for marriage. The popularized notion of a woman in the home had an overall effect that diminished the value of women in society compared to their previous necessity in World War I as workers. Starting with women who were increasingly frustrated by their limitations informally organizing in intimate groups, increased awareness of women’s oppression led to the Women’s Rights Movement, so by 1960 many women sought change in both society and their own lives from their constricting lifestyle. This organization led women to have an increased understanding about the oppression of their sex, which gave them hope to catalyze change. Many women were unsatisfied by the constrained role that they held as housewives, leading to an increase in working women as women began to redefine their social stereotypes: while about thirty-five percent of women held jobs outside the house in 1960, that statistic rose slightly about ten percent over the course of a decade. From the Women's Rights Movement sprung a branch that dedicated itself to changing women’s stigmatized role in...
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...In the film Crocodile Dundee (1986), a female character says, “probably marching now, for the gay Nazis or something,” referring to her previous significant lover. This statement, for obvious reasons, may very well be insulting to some. This film character put someone with a sexual preference on the same level as a group of fascists with the intent of using these words in a derogatory way. Additionally, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007), two men try for a life insurance deal, but to do this, they must pretend to be gay. The film is weighted with numerous homophobic quotes such as, “But really, this is a great thing, even if straight guys might think it’s gross,” and “Having people think you’re gay is gross.” The sexual preferences of, in this particular instance, actual...
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...Jennifer Siebel Newson’s documentaries The Mask You Live In and Miss Representative are quite significant testimonies in today’s society. Both documentaries analyze the effect that society has on both genders, both male and female. It’s conspicuous that societal norms are form of confinement for the individuals that live with in it. It’s a prison for the children that must grow up with and follow the rules of such discriminatory ideals. Acknowledged as a convention to explore the religious, social, and civil problems and the rights of the Women all over the United States, the Seneca Falls Convection was the very first women’s rights convention. It garnered large amounts of widespread awareness and influenced several of the other conferences...
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...implied by the title, misrepresentation - of women by the media. In the documentary, Newsom discusses the effect the portrayal of women in the media has on every aspect of the lives of women in America - from women’s perceptions of their bodies to their ability to participate in government. She uses quantitative data, her own story and the stories of other women, famous and not, and various aspects of the visual track to successfully communicate her message that the media’s portrayal and treatment of women is harmful and must be changed in order for...
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...timeline showing the chronology of shifts in portrayal of women in media is crucial to demonstrate how traditional gender definitions are slowly deconstructed over time. Having made her first debut in the early 1960s, Barbie brought the message “Girls can be anything” to the age of a new generation of girls and women (Boomen, 2009). It is important to note that despite claims that she symbolizes the ‘cultural plastic’ phenomenon, Barbie has revolutionized girl’s doll playing (Boomen, 2009). Before the invention of Barbie, girls were still playing with baby dolls that aimed to foster domestic skills and to prepare them for stereotypical future roles as mothers (Boomen, 2009). Acting as a counter opposite to the former girls play, Barbie is not a doll for girls to simulate and practice motherhood on. In fact, Barbie acts as a platform for girls to freely create and project on her any identity they wish to take on, only to be limited by their creativity. In summary, Barbie is not confined to the traditional social expectations of women. Beneath her seemingly stereotypical idealistic exterior, she is an independent career woman with estimated eighty professions, ranging from a presidential candidate to a nurse (Boomen, 2009). Barbie does not engage in domestic duties and as stated by Lord, motherhood definitely wasn’t Barbie’s area of interest (Boomen, 2009). Subsequently in the late 1990s, Lara Croft emerged as the first main female character in video games. Prior to this, women...
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...concern, the development of eating disorders and lower self-esteem. Moreover, gender is a routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment that actually surfaces in everyday human interaction (West and Zimmerman, 1987), and gender relations are learned through these advertisements, which essentially serve as a distorted reflection of the real world. These sexualized and stereotypical gender images are teaching the viewers a vast array of social cues, a certain way to interpret social reality, and are eventually reconstructing the definition of femininity and masculinity. Various studies have been done regarding the covert ways that magazine advertisements construct masculinity and femininity. Assuming that significant differences in the portrayal of men and women would be found in terms of magazine type and its target readers, a content analysis will be used to examine and compare the selected fashion magazines to determine how contemporary advertisers define or portray masculinity and femininity to different readerships. Literature...
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...specialties, and there are always opportunities to advance in the nursing profession. With nurses playing a major role in designing the new healthcare system in the United States, now there is an even greater need for a positive public image of nursing. However, nursing's contributions to healthcare may be transparent or even ignored by the public and the media. The media has an immense effect on the perceptions of society. Therefore, any misrepresentation of the nursing profession by the media may negatively affect nursing's public image. As nurses, we have a responsibility to the entire nursing profession to protect our image, and take action to ensure that the public is not mislead by the media. Over time, there have been many images of nurses purported by the media. Nurses play roles in movies, television series, plays, books, and in reality they may be seen on the news or in newspapers. Some suggest that these media portrayals are solely to blame for the public's misconceptions or stereotypes regarding nursing. In actuality, the public image of nursing has evolved as the nursing profession has evolved, even before media influence was a factor. In the late 1800's through early 1900's, nursing was viewed as more of a religious calling than a profession. Then, from 1920-1949, nursing was regarded as a skilled discipline (Kelly, 2010). One study, done by Kalisch and Kalisch in 1982, examined film images of nurses from silent films to the 1980s. They found the image of nursing...
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