Essay about The Effects of Printed Media on Gender Roles

I will be looking at women’s to-be-looked-at-ness, and examining the representations of women as objects of the male gaze and male desires. In simple terms, a stereotype is the application of one (usually negative) characteristic to a whole group. The stereotype is an easy concept to understand, but there are some points you need to consider when looking at media representations with regard to stereotyping. For a stereotype to ‘work’ it needs to be recognisable to the audience and when so recognised, then judgements are made about the subject. If the stereotype is negative, then the judgements will also tend to be the same. The predictable thing about stereotypes is that they are†¦show more content†¦Take, for example, the idea that a woman is judged by her appearance more so than a man. If you doubt that this is ‘true’, then look at any text made for women and see how many feature fat women, old wrinkled women or women with greasy hair. You are unlikely to find many and those you do, will probably be featured as ‘sad’, ‘old’ or ‘disadvantaged’ in some way. A proactive approach is vital before it becomes too late to address the fact that new information technologies (internet), magazines, films, newspapers, billboards computer games and television offer access to prostitution and degrading images of women all over the world. The continuing negative and degrading images of women, gender stereotypes and violent and/or pornographic examples in the media have a negative impact and hinders womens full participation in society. The fact that women earn more money than men in only two job categories, those of modelling and prostitution serves to illustrate this point (Wolf, 1992). Women are restricted and relegated to substandard positions for an overwhelmingly male audience this backs up what Wolf says. Women and girls are also consistently taught from an early age that their self-worth is largely dependent on how they look this, being the reason they are forced into only two roles in society (as I have just stated), or they feel as if the se are theShow MoreRelatedThe Traditional Roles of Women in the 1970 ´s 1274 Words   |  5 PagesCourtney and Lockeretz (1971) reviewed 312 printed adverts in eight different types of magazines during the 1970s. According to Courtney and Lockeretz (1971) they believed the adverts they reviewed reflected the following stereotypes of women. Women were portrayed as being home-makers, only being dependent on men, sex objects for men and not being able to make important decisions (Wenner and Jackson, 2009). 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