Gender Roles In Media Analysis

Media in all types of forms will be used to communicate what society believes is to be normal in the current culture. In the essay titled “First” by Ryan Van Meter he describes an experience he had in the back of a station wagon with his first crush. The story of the car ride describes the first time he is told not to feel a certain way towards the same-sex. Though it is ambiguous to say this essay talks about gender roles. On boundless.com gender roles can be defined as “society 's concept of how men and women are expected to act and behave” (Gender and Sociology). In 2008 Beyoncé Knowles released the song “If I Were A Boy”. The song’s lyrics experiment with the idea of gender-swapping and ultimately show what Knowles and society believe are

In 2014 Allison Lantagne published a blog titled “Gender Roles in Media”. This blog explained how various types of media that is presented in our current culture perpetuates gender roles in society. These gender roles are the norms or standards that society has created and enforces. Young children are being exposed to these advertisements that push the gender roles. Lantagne did research and found that even for a gender neutral product such as sidewalk chalk the advertisement sent very different messages towards boys versus girls (The Huffington Post). She questions “Are consumers of sidewalk chalk actively trying to send this message of submission to their 9-year-old girls?”(Lantagne, The Huffington Post). That same year, Tide released an advertisement that was meant to support a more equal society. The advertisement portrayed a stay-at-home dad displaying what society may find as feminine behavior such as styling his daughter’s hair (Lantagne, The Huffington Post). With the economy shifting it is now common for the father to be the primary care taker and the wife to be the bread-winner. In Van Meter’s story he explains that when mothers and fathers drive together it is always the father who drives (107). I would have to agree that normally it is the male seen driving. In my family my mom does the driving and makes all the decisions and because of this growing up I actually thought my mom was taller than my father because her authority over me was, and still is much greater. A stereotypical example of how women are portrayed in media and television is the single female character Penny on the first season of The Big Bang Theory. Played by Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting, Penny is what you would call a stereotypical female: ditzy, attractive and is used to create sexual tension between herself and the other male leads (Lantagne, The Huffington Post). Since the first season they have added more females to