Introduction
Gender roles are widespread within the Western world and they subtly encourage society to follow and conform to the hegemonic ideals about femininity and masculinity until they are considered common sense. These hegemonic ideologies are particularly important when it comes to children’s programming as children are easily influenced and these ideologies could harm them in the future, by convincing them they have to live up to the strict and sometimes impossible standards set forth by society.
Femininity in Children’s Television
The concept of femininity in children’s television has been evolving for many years, but in many cases, there are still flaws with the amount of gender stereotypes used, sexualisation of girls, as well
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The commercials that are targeted and shown to children often feature the hegemonic ideologies surrounding gender, even if the television shows featured on the channel are considered diverse (Kahlenberg & Hein, 2009). Nickelodeon is one of the pioneering television channels for children and is very outspoken about their inclusion of non-stereotypical female leads on their shows, as mentioned by Kahlenberg & Hein (2009), (as cited in Seiter & Mayer, 2004, p. 122), but unfortunately this outspoken diversity does not translate to the commercials being featured. These commercials feature boys playing competitive games such as various sports, video games, and other activities featuring concepts of maintaining status. In contrast, the commercials targeting females feature girls playing more cooperative games, usually revolving around fashion and/or home-life, and feature themes of domesticity (Kahlenberg & Hein, 2009). By showing girls and boys in roles that rely heavily on gender stereotypes it influences children to conform to the hegemonic ideals set in place by society, and in turn, further segregates the
There has been a lot of quarrels over the years about how children’s picture books are embracing traditions and presenting gender stereotypes. In an article I found, author Narahara May of “Gender Stereotypes in Children’s Picture Books,” discusses two major problems. One being that gender stereotypes and sexism has an emotional impact on the development of children’s identity and development. Secondly, she explains about how books in the last decade have portrayed gender negatively. Furthermore, I will be discussing May’s ideas further in depth by examining the portrayals of gender stereotypes found in the popular “Berenstain Bears” picture books.
In “’But Those Are for Boys!’ : Advertising’s Role in Naturalizing Harmful Female Stereotypes” published in the Arak Journal, Women and Gender Studies major Naomi Major is strongly concerned with toy advertising that generalizes boys and girls, in a way that portrays both genders as “two separate, homogeneous groups with contrasting interest.” Naomi expresses her concern by insisting that toy corporations produce products that promote domesticity, and materialism in girls. She argues that it is problematic because it negatively impacts the aspirations and future life hoods of many young females.
In Abernethy’s “Male Bashing on TV”, the way that the author revealed the trend of males depicted as bumbling, lazy, and incompetent on commercials and modern TV shows irritated me Abernethy revealed in this article that the trend of men that are depicted as a minority on TV is getting worse. He shows that men in the media nowadays are shown making a fool out of themselves, doing ridiculous stunts, and overall showing idiotic characteristics unlike many men today. He blames primarily the media for depicting men as “bumbling husbands, and inept, uninvolved fathers”, in which he describes as the “comic image of men on TV” (Abernethy 351). Additionally, he states that since this has become a common theme on modern television, young boys can
The 2001 film Spy Kids is about two children Carmen and Juni Cortez who must save their parents who are spies captured by a children’s television star by the name of Floop. Carmen and Juni are often at odds with each other with their contrasting personalities. Carmen is an independent and confident older sister while Juni is the scared and younger brother who makes frequent mistakes. Compared to the analyzes of children’s books done by Lenore Weitzman in her journal Sex-Role Socialization in Picture Books for Preschool Children and the release of Spy Kids it is apparent that great progress has been made over the years in the dynamics of gender roles shown in the media.
Basing actions off of perception extends far beyond the literary worlds created by McLiam Wilson and Phillips. In an experiment by Behm-Morawitz, Lewallen, and Miller, the researchers found that the actions perceived in reality TV shows had an effect on the attitudes and behaviors of young female viewers. Viewers who watched romance reality TV shows were more likely to hold egalitarian gender role beliefs, while watching makeover and docusoap reality TV programming increased the likelihood that viewers believed females to be socially aggressive, what researchers called “the mean girl stereotype.” This preliminary research suggests that the perception of gender and action on television can have an effect on individual’s behavior in their daily life. This shows that viewers may find acceptable forms of gender and behavior that significantly changes their own behavior.
A new hobby, a distraction from the real world, or a nation wide cultural change and a pathway to new trends, what was TV in the 1980’s? Fantasies and fairy tale galore, TV’s during this decade brought the public into a new world of self expression. People could watch the most perfect romance stories to be educated about the latest news straight from their own living rooms. It changed the lives of many citizens in the way it spread information to everyone home in America and influenced many people by the way it completely disregarded racial minorities.
Gender roles have existed throughout history, and still play a massive role in our society. They dictate how each gender; male, female and androgyny, should behave, and what is appropriate for them and what isn’t. An article “Examining Media’s Socialization of Gender Roles”, exhibits how gender roles are displayed in commercials. Predominately, the commercial “Know Your Gear”, shows what products are masculine and what aren’t. In the text it states, “Ladies have their own stuff’, while he grabs and lifts a white flowered basket filled with brightly colored primarily pink, products, he sternly warns, ‘see this is not for you”.
Many advertisements have images of women that have their faces or mouths covered and are positioned in ways that make them look weak. In contrast, when a man is placed in an advertisement, he is shown as being big and powerful. Men are pushed into the norm of being tough and powerful, just as women are portrayed as weak and passive. These advertisements are examples of how media has a very large influence on us as a culture. “But by the age of 5 or so, most children have developed a fair number of gender stereotypes (often incorrect) that they then use to guide their own perceptions and activities” (Newman 66).
It’s a matter of fact that commercials play an extremely prevalent part of all economies around the world. The invention of television – a powerful visual medium marks the era of TV advertising which has been widely acknowledge as the most pervasive, effective format of advertisement. Not only primarily serve the purpose of stimulating consumption, TV commercials also convey the view of producers, societies or cultures about many aspects of life through underlying ideologies. As a result, audience’s awareness is affected indirectly, which might lead to incorrect assumptions of a part of society. Sexist advertising is a notable example of how TV commercials disseminate gender ideologies.
In 2014 Allison Lantagne published a blog titled “Gender Roles in Media”. This blog explained how various types of media that is presented in our current culture perpetuates gender roles in society. These gender roles are the norms or standards that society has created and enforces. Young children are being exposed to these advertisements that push the gender roles. Lantagne did research and found that even for a gender neutral product such as sidewalk chalk the advertisement sent very different messages towards boys versus girls (The Huffington Post).
Gender representation and the misrepresentation of reality in advertisement was the topic of my junior year Girl Scout journey project. When this project was first announced, I was both excited and worried: excited because the subject matter interests me, and worried because I feared how little progress we as a society had made in the (admittedly short) 2 years that had passed since I conducted research for my project. With those dueling feelings, I began watching and analyzing the commercials, noting patterns of commercials themselves along with the content. The average commercial break contained 4-6 advertisements with a total time of 2-3 minutes. Although the assignment required us to take written notes on only 10 commercials,
Every once in awhile, shows such as Leave It to Beaver or Father Knows Best come up while surfing the tv guide. While these are two examples of remarkably popular television shows of the mid 1900’s, they also portray the gender normalities of the time period. Gender roles were simply and precisely defined. Men went to work and made the money, while the women stayed home to take care of the house and kids. However, as humanity enters the sixteenth year of the twenty first century, this precision begins to blur.
Albert Bandura has proposed the importance of social cognition theory, “learning socially accepted behaviours by observing them from their peers.” . Girls aged 12-14 years old begin to watch shows that pit women against each other such as Victorious, Wizards of Waverly Place, and Modern Family. These programs are on family networks, yet their subliminal messages transition to watching similar programs, like Keeping up with the Kardashian’s, The Real Housewives and The Bachelor as they transition to adulthood. Moss suggests the lack of female representation in multimedia has lead to the impression that women don’t talk to each other for ‘catty’ reasons. Academics Gerding and Signorielli believe that social cognitive theory, is a strong aspect of gender role learning to tweens as they are old enough to watch television actively and selectively.
Sexism, racism, and culturalism have been a huge problem for many years. So why is it any different in television shows? This essay will debate why each one happens behind the scenes and tie it to a television show, that exhibits each point. The first paragraph will state which show was chosen to exhibit the three main points and discuss why. Paragraphs two, three, and four will discuss the problems with sexism.
The representation of gender in mass communications has been a hugely debated topic for years and will continue to be one for many more years to come. The media plays a big role in how they want to portray a gender to the public. They create certain stereotypes through the role of a gender in order to attract a large audience and interest to sell a product, brand or image. Media is so important in today’s society, people spend hours and hours each day watching TV, browsing the Internet and reading magazines. There are so many images of men and women in the media today that it certainly has an impact on the viewer’s thoughts and sense of identity.