Stereotyping - Gender

Gender Stereotypes

NEO-MARXIST

WILLIAMS

• Advertising domestic stereotype : advertisers make profit by selling the nuclear family stereotype as the housewife/mother lifestyle. 

Butler & Paisley --> 70% of women in advertisements in 1980 study were shown doing domestic roles. Reasons that advertisers focus on nuclear, privatised family to see more products.

Also trying to sell a whole way of life --> 'What Not To Wear' TV programme by Trinny & Susannah suggest improved fashion sense and beauty tips will enhance our quality of life but can also be the remedy for relationship problems. 

+ Identify how female stereotypes might generate profits for advertisers that benefit the capitalist economy.

- PM Baudillard : female identities and roles represented that also benefits the consumer.

RADICAL FEMINISTS (Media is patriarchal, owned or controlled by men to meet interests)

DWORKIN

1960's 'sex object' stereotype - violent effects on the female audience. 

• Reflects heterosexual male sexual fantasy, as women as often defined as slim, sexually seductive and the typical image of a page 3 model, or as male fantasy in ***********.

• Also represented as the subservient recipients of male sexual desire; pornogrpahy leads to increased sexual violence against women in society (****).

- Dwokrin's hypodermic approach to the effects of *********** on male audiences ignores that there is no established links found between watching *********** and ****. Rapists are no more likley to watch *********** than men not convicted of ****.

MARXIST FEMINISTS

CONELL (2005) : beauty stereotype

• Beauty advertisements promotes what she calls the 'beauty myth' = the idea that women should be assessed in terms of their appearance as they attempt to fulfil the hegemonic definition of female beauty or sex object.
• Predominance of cosmetics, fashion and plastic surgery in women's magazines may be linked to anorexia and other eating disorders.

-PMFeminist Winship (1987) : argues that magazines like Cosmopolitan provide images of feminity that emphasise independence and confidence.

--> articles on career women & sex tips move away from old female stereotype of housewife/sex object. 

- Winship also argues that Cosmo tackles real women's concerns that were once taboo, like domestic violence and sexual abuse which empower readers. 

POSTMODERNIST

McROBBIE : male sex object plays a negative role for men

• Today men are subjected to the 'female gaze' as men are becoming sexualised objects in the media, lifestyle magazines. film and press. 

• For example; the parallel of men's obsession with women's breasts, is the media's obsession with men's 'moobs' in the 2000s. The Sun newspaper began this as they published the 'Hall of shame'series of pictures in 2005 showing different shapes and sizes of men's breasts. Making comments which other tabloids soon followed with criticisms of flabby stomachs - 'holiday podges' and love handles.

McRobbie (1994) - men beginning to face same scrutiny. This is reflected in the consumption of new beauty products and cosmetics for men. 

POSTMODERNIST

ABERCROMBIE (1999)

Soap storylines are driven by strong female characters like Peggy Mitchell in Eastenders. 

• Woman also feature in TV genres where once they were peripheral, such as police dramas.

• In the 1970s, programmes like The Sweeney were male centred; women played parts as wives and prostitutes.

• Now, in The Bill and Prime Subject, play centre stage and hols poisitons of authority (detectives, police sergants and chief inspectors)

=For PM's like Ambercrombie, soaps play a positive role by offering women a varitey of new occupational roles to choose from.