Now we would like to focus on the attendance of gender stereotypes in the mass media, which
nowadays has a great power and reaches large audiences. Mass media do not only gives people
information and entertainment, but, according to a Canadian communication theorist, it also affects
people’s lives by shaping their opinions, attitudes and beliefs. It controls social life by invisibly
transferring the dominant authoritarian ideology. In the case of gender roles, the societies have
established the hegemony of males by institutionalizing of male control over women. That’s right folks,
people still do that! As we mentioned above, men have been perceived as the head of the household
and women were housewives. Nowadays, the differences between male and female roles are smaller,
however mass media still continues traditional gender stereotypes. By manipulating the message, media
can create a certain image of reality, which is true to the policy of the dominant group. As a result, the
reflection of a real world is incomplete and distorted. Although people are aware of the unequal
representation of certain social groups in mass media, it is hard to remain detached and insensitive to its
influence. Moreover, women are more often presented in commercials, because they are seen as
responsible for making everyday purchases in commercials with cosmetics and domestic products and
portrayed in the home environment. Unlike men, who generally advertise cars, cigarettes, business
products or investments and are shown outdoors. Thus we can clearly see what is expected from us from
a simple product commercial. And the ugly part is that
advertising companies do on purpose for the profit!
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One example for gender stereotypes can be a YouTube
viral video that circulates online, in which 2 boys and one
girl are doing a social experiment consisting in domestic
abuse performed in public. In the first part of the video
the girl is being “abused” by one of the guys and in the
second part, the boy is being maltreated by the girl. The
audience’s reaction raised some questions. For the first
part, people walking by, stopped, intervened between
the couple, and some even tried to punch the man for
beating her in public. The interesting thing is that, in the
last part, for the woman beating the man, nobody
interrupted or even stopped whatsoever, they just kept
walking and (the sad truth!) they started making fun of
the man and calling him names. The moral of this video is that we are so focused on feminist equality
that we forget sometimes what equality really means, making us conscious that we need to centre on
both genders.
Another example of gender stereotyping is a YouTube video spreading the awareness of rape of women.
It is said that the rape of women is their own fault: women shouldn’t wear short skirts. They shouldn’t