Gender Stereotypes In Australia

Summary The article Body-Image Pressure Increasingly Affects Boys by Jamie Santa Cruz it about how the perception of an ideal guy affects boy just as much as it affects girls. More recently boys are beginning to have a negative outlook on their bodies because of toys, movies and magazines. Depression, drinking, and drugs such as steroids are just some of the negative outcomes of what happens when men have a negative body image.

Dissatisfaction amongst today’s youth regarding their personal body image is increasingly common, warranting a necessary change in the norms and behaviours that are portrayed to Canadian youth. The necessary change that must be implemented moving forward is the portrayal of healthy and attainable body images through media. A 2012 ABC News article stated the average model weighs 23% less than the average woman (Lovett, 2012). Such an appalling statistic is something that must be tackled as we progress toward the future seeing as it showcases to the youth of today that anorexia and unhealthy body weight is seen as desirable or attractive. The relation between such a statistic and anorexia is clear.

In today’s society, the younger generations are focused on their body image and of others compared to generations in previous years. Many are very conscious about how their appearance is and have a created a stereotypical image for the average male and female. Also, many have become judgemental and prejudice towards other because of their body image, not personality and behaviors. Today, many people will put down others because of their body image.

Body image issues are compounded by unrealistic portrayals of women in the media. 1. Nichter & Nichter (1991) found that the ideal teenage girl was described as being 5’7”, 100 pounds, and size 5 with long blonde hair and blue eyes. If this were a real person, she would represent a body mass index lower than 16, which is extremely unrealistic and bordering on anorexic. On the same note, the average model portrayed in the media is approximately 5’1 1” and 120 pounds.

Ge et al. (2001) mentions that the ideal body image varies across different ethnicities and Becker et al. (2004) discuss how thinness is the main goal across different cultures. However problems can occur if that ideal body type is not achieved by individuals therefore in this case, Shilling’s (2012) idea of body project becomes an important aspect. I will focus on body image within adolescents as this is a vital age for physical transformation (Ge et al. 2001) and how this can positively or negatively affect their sense of self.

Body images are so important in today’s society and it is scary to think about. Society needs to stop creating these unrealistic body images. There is almost no escape from body image. We are living in an era where obsessing over what we look like is a daily activity. From birth, images of the “perfect body” take over a young mind.

A gender stereotype may be a generalized view or preconception regarding attributes or characteristics that are ought to be possessed by, or the roles that are or should be performed by men and women (Gender stereotypes/stereotyping). Gender stereotype can be harmful when

The concept of body image is one that many men but mostly women deal with in their everyday lives. Women and body image go hand in hand, it is believed that women are supposed to look a certain way constructed by societal “norms”. Body image might be more prevalent in our world today although that does not mean that it has not always been an important topic in past generations. While interviewing my mom, Liana Gigliotti, I was able to learn about how body image affected her during her younger years. My mom is forty-four years old, growing up during in the mid 1970’s and 80’s her education and understandings of body image are a lot different then what is being taught today.

The media culture has not been helpful with impacting positive body image, rather, has influenced people’s perception of their bodies

Therefore, unlike the case for body dissatisfaction in females, this effect is not greater in males already dissatisfied with their muscularity (Cash and Smolak 103-104). The effect of the media on gender is also repeated by Levine and Harrison that the effect weighed more heavily on females than males (505). However, the media is still capable of inciting body dissatisfaction in adolescent boys and men when it comes to the lean and muscular body ideal. Therefore, how both genders are influenced by the mass media in terms of perception of their body image, is shown to be more prevalent in females.

Women theses days are trying their best in order to accept the wrong trend. Thigh gap, bikini bridge, anorexia, bulimia, obesity, those are common things that may pop-up in a teenager’s conversation these days. Why do female tend to have a body image problem compared to male? Because

Also an individual’s body image concerns could affect the adolescent girls’ rates of joining in other sports. Field (2005) results suggest that girls engage in using products that are not healthy just to get a low body weight, also in achieving other physiques girls and boys may also turn to no healthy means. Mundell (2002) found that the fifth graders were dissatisfied with their own bodies, 10 year old girls and boys told researchers after watching a video clip from the TV show. Karges (2015) found that the advanced technology or the media go through the minds of young adults and could influence in their decreased body satisfaction. Lodge (2014) results show that adolescents who spent more time on Facebook or social media were more likely to compare themselves to their friends, which shows that they have negative body

Do gender stereotypes affect learning? I was once placed into a certain gender stereotype, of how girls were annoying and just useless. I was told this in 3rd grade since I didn’t want to play baseball and was unable to hit the ball. Being told this as young as I was, it took me a long time to surpass that stereotype, due to how it was in the back of my mind.

Body shaming is one of the biggest problems in today’s generation. It is the practice of making critical, potentially humiliating comments about a person’s body, size or weight. It is obvious that all of us come in different shapes and sizes but society and the media puts a lot of pressure on us with beauty stereotypes and standards to deem some as healthy and some not. Recently, there has been a lot of controversy recently about body image and body shaming, especially among teenagers. Body shaming is an extremely personal concept and can take a negative toll on a person.

Men and women nowadays are starting to lose self-confidence in themselves and their body shape, which is negatively impacting the definition of how beauty and body shape are portrayed. “...97% of all women who had participated in a recent poll by Glamour magazine were self-deprecating about their body image at least once during their lives”(Lin 102). Studies have shown that women who occupy most of their time worrying about body image tend to have an eating disorder and distress which impairs the quality of life. Body image issues have recently started to become a problem in today’s society because of social media, magazines, and television.