Gender Roles and Stereotyping
Gender Roles
The topic of stereotyping and the way it affects our gender roles and relationships is ongoing. Media continues to single out men and women and exaggerate our ‘typical’ roles in order to sell a product. You never see a man in a cleaning supply commercial…do you? How often to we see women rescuing men in movies? These examples may be of the least importance to us, but media such as movies and magazines can really give us a preconceived idea of what sex and our relationship is ‘supposed’ to be like. I truly believe that most movies give women higher expectations of their significant other. Every straight woman I know dreams of that fairytale love story, and that big tough guy that makes them feel safe. Who wouldn’t want such a thing? If they can do it in movies we expect them to portray these characteristics in real life. Magazines, in my opinion, are the biggest culprits for stereotyping relationships, men, and women. Cosmopolitan (a personal favorite), for example, is constantly giving advice on how to please a man sexually. Why sexually? This type of article gives women the idea that in order to please our men we have to do exotic, “kinky” sex tricks. Magazines also tend to advertise fitness and the models are very lean, so the teenagers and many adults who see these images feel they need to look like these models in order to feel good and please a man. All in all, I believe the media creates a very unrealistic expectation regarding sex, and relationships.
The topic of stereotyping and the way it affects our gender roles and relationships is ongoing. Media continues to single out men and women and exaggerate our ‘typical’ roles in order to sell a product. You never see a man in a cleaning supply commercial…do you? How often to we see women rescuing men in movies? These examples may be of the least importance to us, but media such as movies and magazines can really give us a preconceived idea of what sex and our relationship is ‘supposed’ to be like. I truly believe that most movies give women higher expectations of their significant other. Every straight woman I know dreams of that fairytale love story, and that big tough guy that makes them feel safe. Who wouldn’t want such a thing? If they can do it in movies we expect them to portray these characteristics in real life. Magazines, in my opinion, are the biggest culprits for stereotyping relationships, men, and women. Cosmopolitan (a personal favorite), for example, is constantly giving advice on how to please a man sexually. Why sexually? This type of article gives women the idea that in order to please our men we have to do exotic, “kinky” sex tricks. Magazines also tend to advertise fitness and the models are very lean, so the teenagers and many adults who see these images feel they need to look like these models in order to feel good and please a man. All in all, I believe the media creates a very unrealistic expectation regarding sex, and relationships.