Media And Gender Stereotypes

The media plays a major role in society’s conceptions and binaries regarding gender, sexuality, and success. The media depicts a “normal” beautiful female as thin, tall, and white which measures her success. If a woman is visually appealing, society considers her beauty as a measure of success; the media shows beautiful women achieving their dreams more than other women who don’t fit into the description of beauty. Although the media has been changing its interpretation of beauty and gender, cases where the ideals of beauty measure success are too frequent, even in today’s society. The company, Barbie, has been under major scrutiny from the public, women are beginning to see how Barbie reflects society’s views on gender and beauty. Although,
I argue that society views Barbie dolls are an example of a beautiful woman since they share the same (exaggerated) physical characteristics as models and celebrities who are globally viewed as beautiful. The Barbie advertisement “#unapologetic” features dolls with unrealistic beauty characteristics, and although the dolls are not all white, the majority of them are. Sut Jhally emphasized that advertisements are simply representations of social values and what people want to see rather than “real people” (250). He noted, “[a]dvertising promotes images of what the audience conceive of as the good life” (251) which I interpret, with regards to Barbie dolls, that being a white, beautiful, and thin woman is
Society views women who don’t share “visually appealing” physical characteristics as ugly and undesirable. Barbie tries to tell girls that they can accomplish their dreams, if they are beautiful, similar to Barbie dolls. Furthermore, Barbie’s marketers use the doll’s desirable visual appearance to tempt young girls to own the doll. Barbie contributes to the media’s portrayal of the beautiful women by showing attractiveness through model-like appearances, success marked by beauty, and attractiveness as desirable, which contribute to unrealistic beauty