Preview

Stereotypes In The Media Essay

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1524 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Stereotypes In The Media Essay
How to Improve the Stereotypes In the Media? Nearly half of girls ages 13-17 wish they were as skinny as the models they see in advertising and on TV (Yorio). A great majority of people are accepting of those stereotypes and the images shown on TV. The women are extremely thin with long hair, smooth skin and white teeth (Yorio). Because the media portrays women in this way, it colors the world’s perception of how women should appear and decreases most women’s self-esteem. Gender stereotypes are one of several forms of bias that media has made over the years. The media can have the positive effect of providing information and entertainment and it is a big impact on our everyday lives. People learn about each other without having to verbally …show more content…
They take what they see and hear and label people in groups. For example, “Long-term exposure to local television news, where in African-Americans are depicted frequently and stereotypically as criminals, predicted increased negative implicit attitudes toward African-Americans” (Carroll). So the stereotypes are portrayed and used in different ways and because of how the media use ammunition which leads to people labeling other people and this leads to negative effects to people or certain groups of …show more content…
Even sitcoms and the local news enforce these stereotypes with its portrayal of minorities (Gosling). The negative effect of stereotypes also leads to low self-perception. For example, there can be negative effects when magazines portray women as tall, skinny, and beautiful it makes teenage girls have less self-esteem about themselves and that leads to them becoming anorexic, or changing their look by getting plastic surgery. To help to prevent this thing from happening, people need to raise awareness about these negative

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    By stereotyping we infer that a person has a whole range of characteristics and abilities that we assume all members of that group have. Stereotypes lead to social categorization, which is one of the reasons for prejudice attitudes. Most stereotypes probably tend to convey a negative impression.…

    • 544 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Most stereotypes seem to have a negative tone towards the group of people they are intended for. Those types of stereotypes can be hurtful because they are opinions that are not the truth. Stereotypes can also affect the way people think about themselves and how they interact with others, for example Muslims are stereotyped as terrorist therefore people avoid Muslims all together.(Schaefer,2012).…

    • 632 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Stereotypes can be defined as judgments that people make against others before they truly understand them, and they impact our society in many ways. For example, in an interview with Guy Raz from NPR,…

    • 793 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Social Dichotomy Of Race

    • 1682 Words
    • 7 Pages

    For an example of media portrayal of negative minority stereotypes, we can look at the 1992 riot in Los Angeles. In this case the media encouraged the perception that the black community was solely responsible for the riots and disturbances, even though the police reports show that of those arrested only 36% were black. This is just one example. Many television shows and video games show an overwhelming amount of African Americans and Hispanics as criminals. This is one way that race has become a social construction that is ingrained within our…

    • 1682 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In present day media, there are numerous stereotypes of people that can be found, such as the popular jock or the dumb cheerleader. These stereotypes are displayed on television shows and others forms of media to add humour and make the shows more relatable to the viewer since many schools have such stereotypes. Many forms of media use social stereotypes as a way to provide the audience with a quick common understanding of the characters, so they base the stereotypes on their audience. Other forms of media use stereotypes to take the audience on a journey of social differences. Nevertheless, there are always a few stereotypes that are usually present in many forms of media, such as the “popular one”, the “dumb one”, the “smart one”, and so on.…

    • 879 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Several studies have shown that there are many ways in which a woman’s body image, eating patterns, and self-esteem is negatively affecting what audiences see and hear from the media. In 1996, an article titled, “Body Image: A Cognitive Self-Schema Construct, by Altabe and Thompson, indicates that “social endorsements” are inherent in how the media is portraying the “ideal body.” This has created a sense in women to examine the image of their body to determine if they need to radically alter their eating habits in order to offset that undesirable body. This, in turn, may have led to eating disorder. Also, Heinberg and Thompson (1995) indicated that females who were exposed to appearance-related media were less satisfied with their body shape than females who were exposed to non-appearance related…

    • 967 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Many things can affect one’s body perception such as peers and family but most importantly the influences within the media can have the biggest affect on how one sees themselves. In some ways people can control the social factors that negatively affect their body perception. However, the mass media is every where and can be hard to avoid. Past research indicates that by the time a girl turns 6 she is already dissatisfied with her body image (Hayes & Tantleff,2010). The social standards of today emphasizes the need for women to be thin and blemish free, setting a physical expectation of beauty that is beyond impossible to reach ( Tiggemann, 2003). It is said that media is the most influential…

    • 1894 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Stereotyping In The Media

    • 399 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Stereotyping, in its various forms, plays a significant role in class divisions of our society but perhaps none more impactful than with the categorization of race as it relates to law enforcement. While statistics may seem to guide citizens to believe minorities commit more violent crimes, Mann suggests, “what types of crimes are defined, how they are defined, and who is defining them” are primary flaws in the overrepresentation of crimes committed by African-Americans (1993, p. 70). Perhaps the strongest influence contributing to the public perception of crimes committed by minorities is the racial stereotypes depicted by the media. I offer the movie trailer for “Whose Streets” advertising the aftermath of the Michael Brown police involved shooting in Ferguson, MO, from my white privileged seat, is a reminder of how the…

    • 399 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mass Media Stereotypes

    • 204 Words
    • 1 Page

    “Communication research and theory suggest that the mass media are an important source of information about African Americans and media portrayals contribute to public perceptions of African Americans” (Punyanunt-Carter 241). What we see about African Americans from television makes us to have certain images about them. TV became a common object that most people have in United States, and we get to watch and hear different kinds of contents from many broadcasting stations. TV now has become an object that most people in America have due to it is information and entertaining purposes. However, there is a problem. Some TV shows are creating certain images about certain races which make the public to have certain perceptions about certain races.…

    • 204 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    We see stereotypes everywhere; from the news, to tv shows, to commercials, to movies, to magazines, and even in social media. The media alone put so much emphasis on attractiveness that they are reinforcing this idea that it is beauty and not brains that matter. This results in young girls being unhappy with the way they look. They start to compare and contrast their looks to what they see in the media at such an early age and I believe this is what contributes the most to negative body image. Being told that you are not tall enough, or short enough, or skinny enough, or fat enough, is detrimental to not only our physical health but our mental health as well. In the media, we see successful women being undermined and rather than focusing on their accomplishments, the media decides to focus on her appearance. One example was of a comment made by President Barack Obama about California Attorney General Kamala Harris. He stated that “You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you’d want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake. She also happens to be by far the best-looking attorney general in the country.” This comment by one of the most powerful and influential men in the world, sadly…

    • 1888 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Black Men Stereotypes

    • 1625 Words
    • 7 Pages

    From Jersey Shore to Zoey 101, stereotypes practically make up reality TV. Whether the stereotypes are offensive to people down South or showing the “expectations” of what different genders should look like, they are dangerous and unfair. Stereotypes are simply a fixed belief that all people with a certain characteristic are the same. When people are put under a label, certain decisions are made that can affect them in harmful ways. Recently, a study was done by Professor Michael Inzlicht on the reactions of people when put into negative stereotyping situations. Inzlicht said, “People are more likely to be aggressive after they’ve faced prejudice in a given situation. They are more likely to exhibit a lack of self control. They have trouble…

    • 1625 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    From Tiana from Disney’s The Princess and The Frog to the titular character from the upcoming film Moana, representation of minority groups in children’s animated media is improving. However, despite the promising leads, representation is barely reaching the heights it should have by this day and age. Racial stereotypes and whitewashing of black or Asian characters is still exceedingly common in both animated and live action films and, of course, misogyny still runs rampant on television. As a rule, animators and artists are given very little creative leeway when developing characters as most design requests come from managing executives. Regardless, something must be done in order to preserve comfortable spaces for all children who enjoy television.…

    • 1732 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Stereotypes reflect ideas that groups of people hold about others who are different from them. Stereotypes can be positive or negative, but most stereotypes tend to make us feel superior in some way to the person or group being stereotyped. People that are obvious to a certain profession or gender are often stereotyped, such as, police officers, women, and people of color. Stereotyping is a thought process that organizes beliefs about one group of people and assigns them to everyone in that group (The Quad News, 2010). We cheat ourselves from ever getting to know a person for who they are as an individual. At worst stereotyping can turn into such things as racial profiling and other discriminatory things. We have all been stereotyped…

    • 372 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The core of stereotyping starts from families. When growing up in a family, people learn to differentiate themselves from others. They learn how to love and care for others who look like them and grouping others in different categories. Stereotypes can also be learned through media. On television after 9/11 all Muslims, people who look “middle eastern”or someone who wears a rag is assumed a terrorist. This stereotype is spread throughout media caused social disruption. Another example would be how races were portrayed on television. Whites are seen a the dominance in civilization. They are superior in movies and television and play the majority of the lead roles in the theater industry. The minority's get stereotypes that shame them such as: black people commit crimes, asian people have a weird accent, latinos work on farms for the whites.…

    • 928 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Many stereotypes are influenced through two ways, media and society. This can end up with a person having racial profiling used against them and causing a negative impact on their life. People in their society tend to stereotype others because they come from different backgrounds then them. The most popular reason people get stereotyped in their community is because they are of a different race. An example of this would be when the nation received an African American president. Many people thought that racism was over because of this election. But according to Bill Wanlund, “despite the re-election of America’s first African American president, recent surveys reveal that racism still exists among Americans, along with a general perception that race relations have not improved since Barrack Obama was first elected in 2008” (“Race” 2). Instead of this helping the nation with racism, it has made the nation worse in this area of…

    • 992 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics