Gender Roles In Media - An Argumentative Essay

 Gender Roles in Media- An Argumentative Essay

            Women are more often shown through media that they look a certain way. Conventional wisdom claims that there should be a lack of personal individuality to meet these types of sexualized standards. There is often a lack of understanding that these standards exist with men, too. My whole life, I have heard people say that I should look or act in a certain way, and as I got older, I learned that many of those ideals that were being pressured on myself and other young individuals came from a media outlook. Gender in media should not be so stereotypically sexist for both men and women because these types of effects can take generations to overcome and change.

            The Gender in Media Encyclopedia demonstrates that gender roles have existed for centuries. It states, "The first women’s magazine, The Lady’s Magazine, began publication in England. It creates the model for other popular women’s magazines of the period by targeting upper-class women with a combination of fiction and articles focused on concerns such as fashion and etiquette” (Koust).  Koust emphasizes that though the first idea of gender in media was very long ago, we still see examples of the same thing in media today. To show how complicated the media continues to become regarding gender roles “in 2011, journalist Peggy Orenstein published Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie Girl Culture, detailing the cultural pressures on preteen girls to adopt sexualized clothing and appearances” (Koust). This is important because it demonstrates that even though we have moved forward as a society in many ways, we still have work to do to make gender roles not as prominent in the media today. I have always believed that the press has too much influence on how one should look or behave, and many of these ideals are displayed in media in ways as diverse as children's picture books, magazines, Broadway productions, and comic books.

            However, a long-accepted argument is that those roles are there for one reason or another, but one must look at the generational impact they can have. In the book “The Three Bears Are All Boys: Mothers’ gender labeling of Neutral Picture Book Characters” by Judy DeLoache, she evaluates how often mothers label characters of picture books with a more masculine pronoun. This is important because, as stated in the book, “they show that adults unwittingly behave differently to boys and girls, and in the process communicate sex- mothers' labeling stereotyped information to them” (DeLoache). This type of labeling inadvertently shows that girls are not valued or thought of as much as boys. Often, one will use a masculine pronoun in a gender-neutral sense, but the biggest question that should be asked is why that has been the case for so long. It’s gotten so common that it’s often done subconsciously without realizing it. Some could say that it’s an old habit, but it usually comes down to the passive perception of men as usual and that they are viewed as more important. This thinking can even start with something as simple as a picture book. It’s always refreshing to find a book, movie, or sitcom with a female protagonist. However, it is still incredibly rare even in today's day and age, with it being even rarer to have one represented by the LGBTQ community.

            One way that feels more notable regarding gender roles is those portrayed in comic books. Michelle Ann Abate wrote “Funny Girls: Guffaws, Guts and Gender in Classic American Comics.” This book is a representation of gender in comics. It showcases many main female protagonists in comics and how female representation is becoming more common. The main point that the author makes is that “the increased presence of women and girls in comics in the United States is regarded as being so newsworthy because it represents a massive shift in the gender dynamics historically associated in the industry.” Abate uses key points when it is shown that “although comics have been a masculinist form for many decades, this observation does not hold for the genre’s entire history.”

In the early days of comics, the first comic that gained active interest was Marjorie Henderson Buell’s Little Lulu, which had a female lead. From 1935 to 1944, it lasted nine years in total. After this, the first comic book with a female lead was published in the 1940s. This happened in the Jungle #2 issue by Fiction House Magazines. They introduce a character who becomes the first true female superhero, Fantomah, Mystery Woman of the Jungle. Her supernatural powers allow her to punish those threatening the jungle or its inhabitants.

 It wasn’t until the 70s that the comics started to have more of an adult theme, and the dynamic shifted to be more male-focused.  Although there were more adult themes, many of the early 1970s comics did talk about LGBT issues within the self-published Underground Comix. When the revolution of comics started to shift in the 1970s, we saw more females take on the role of the damsel in distress, the character that always needed to be saved. Though these characters appealed to a larger male audience, they showcased females in a negative light, often making them objects of male desire. With all this changing, it’s no surprise that the female sales of comic books dropped, as they were no longer represented well. One could argue that males were not represented well in that same light. These types of overly done male stigmas, where they must be the ultimate protector, are often not seen as benefiting how the average male should be in everyday life.

Kenneth Kraus wrote “Male Beauty: Postwar Masculinity in Theatre, Film, and Physique Magazines.” And it is about the difficulty of discussing masculinity and various understandings of gender constructs. It takes a deeper look into different media outlets to see where the first ideals of masculinity emerged. Starting with Broadway, Kraus uses the production of “Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie, written and first produced before World War II had ended, the figure of the defiant, nonconformist young male, which would haunt American culture during the late 1940s and through the 1950s, first appears on stage; presciently, Williams creates a character who will dominate much of the literature of the postwar period. The young man who escapes the traditional, approved social and sexual norms and attempts, through his alienation, to thwart the middle-class rules that impose themselves on the individual remains a romantic emblem of youthful defiance in an oppressive and repressive era.” With these new ideals being implemented at such a crucial time, it is important to see its impact. These views offered a different perspective that was not traditionally seen; they started paving the way for men to be more open about their sexuality and emotions.

As the acceptance of male sexuality became more of a mainstream topic, the idea of male fantasy persisted and grew, and new types of media appeared, offering a deeper view into homosexual desire. Kraus continued to state “that because of their precarious status and their homosexual agendas, physique magazines could challenge the status quo only within an often-narrow range. Thus, physique magazines, even as they catered to a persecuted minority, tended to fulfill many of the cultural norms held by America at large.” More often, this is not understood as part of an issue in mainstream society, but it offers a glimpse into how males can also be mis-portrayed in media. Much like with females, it’s a hard reality to face when the depictions in media look nothing like you, leaving many individuals with lower self-confidence. 

Monique Ward and Petal Grower wrote Media and the Development of Gender Role Stereotypes. It is about how the media influences the development of gender stereotypes. First, the article refers to gender as an open concept when it uses the example, “As with other belief systems, youth learn their culture's gender norm expectations from those around them, including parents, teachers, and friends. The mainstream media provide compelling models of gender norms for several reasons.” This is important because it highlights the media has power around us, especially when it comes to our appearance and how others perceive it. This is shown in the article when it uses the example of “Recent analyses of prime-time television programming reveal that male characters are more verbally and physically aggressive than female characters and that female characters are better liked and more family-oriented than male characters.”

Revealing this stereotyping is eye-opening to many viewers who may not see this happening in front of them. But it’s an important representation to highlight as it shows how, even in media, women are meant to be soft-spoken and in the background. At the same time, men take on more of a central role, and from the early days of media up until now, that has remained relatively the same. Even with the new rising trend of having females in leading roles, more often, it is still seen where the men must come in and save the day, implying that women are unable to be the heroes of their own stories, and this is showcased by most media being unable to pass the Bechdel test. Lois Neville of Backstage Magazine says the Bechdel “test is a measure of the representation of women in film and other forms of fiction. To pass, the work must feature at least two women who speak to each other about something other than a man. Some iterations of the Bechdel test require that the two women be named.” With such easy criteria, astonishingly enough, these are continually overlooked.

Candan Ozturk wrote “Attitudes of 3 Generations of Women toward Gender Roles.” This is an important investigation as it looks at a broader view of gender roles because it spans three generations. As stated in the article, “The roles of a woman and a man are shaped by the demands concerning gender. Gender defines women as responsible for caring for the housework, and men should take part in business life and meet the financial costs of the house.” This highlights the restrictions often placed upon people because of their gender. Within the three generations, there was no significant difference in how each viewed gender roles. This shows how long these types of ideals have been around and how each generation has them.

Much of this research is still observed in everyday life, even in the current 21^st century. Women are still often overly exposed to media that normalizes the need to take care of everything at home, while men are labeled as the head of the house. It’s not only a woman’s place to do housework or take care of the kids, but also a general responsibility that shouldn’t be only a woman’s role. At the same time, men shouldn’t be expected to isolate themselves emotionally and always act as the heroic savior. LGBTQ people of both genders are negatively affected by gender stereotypes portrayed in media as traditional roles do not accommodate people who do not fall neatly into these categories.  Gender in media should not be so stereotypically sexist for both men and women because these types of effects can take generations to overcome and change.

©️ The Rosebud Writings 

Citations:

Abate, Michelle Ann. Funny Girls: Guffaws, Guts, and Gender in Classic American Comics. University Press of Mississippi, 2019.

DeLoache, Judy S., et al. “The Three Bears Are All Boys: Mothers’ Gender Labeling of Neutral Picture Book Characters - Sex Roles.” SpringerLink, Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers, 1987, link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00287623.

Kosut, Mary. Encyclopedia of Gender in Krauss, K. (2015). Male beauty: Postwar masculinity in theater, film, and Physique Magazines. SUNY Press. Media. Sage Reference, 2012.

Ozturk, Cadan. Attitudes of Three Generations of Women toward Gender Roles, Oct. 2021, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ppc.12776.

Neville, Lois. "What Is the Bechdel Test?" Backstage, 30 May 2023, www.backstage.com/magazine/article/what-is-the-bechdel-test-75534/. Accessed 10 Dec. 2023.

Ward, Monique. “Media and the Development of Gender Role Stereotypes.” Media and the Development of Gender Role Stereotypes., Dec. 2020, www.researchgate.net/publication/344404333_Media_and_the_Development_of_Gender_Role_Stereotypes.