Mass Media And Gender Stereotypes

In todays world, mass media plays an important role by distributing information rapidly and entertaining massive audiences. Mass Media contains all sorts of media such as television, radio, books and the internet. However, nowadays the internet is the most evolving channel, while the TV also has some sort of an effect, by producing a certain type of message, the media can have control on people’s attitudes and beliefs. Advertising is a form of communication for marketing which is used to persuade the target audience in order to purchase a certain product, it has become a vital part of our life and can offer information and bring suitability to the consumers. Whenever people are watching the TV, or scrolling on the internet or just driving

These roles are inbuilt from a young age and are pushed on to children so that they support the idea. Often boys tend to pick on other boys if they are seen playing with dolls and vice versa if girls want to play with tanks and cars. As children grow up and later hit puberty many factors effect their behaviors towards gender roles, these behaviors are learned at home mainly and later are strengthened by other influences such as friends and school experiences and television. A study of children’s rooms reports that girl’s rooms have more pink, dolls and house play sets while boys have more blue, tools and sports equipment’ and girls are more likely to have chores such as cleaning and doing the laundry, while boys are more likely to have maintenance chores. These types of household chores lead children to link types of work to gender applying gender stereotypes. Children, as they lack maturity, they are more vulnerable of getting influenced by the television. They usually accept everything on television to be ‘real’. Kids often recognize movie characters as superheroes much more than the elder generation does. However; this stage is the role of the parents to educate them that not

Young girls are pursued with images of princesses, who tell them that the key to happiness is being fashionable, beautiful, and finding a prince to save you. Young men are taught that to be successful, you must be good looking and muscular. Young men are sometimes even taught that to be successful means to be manipulative. It seems that these views have been current forever, which is caused from early childhood, we are taught by our parents that pink is for girls, and blue is for boys. The trucks and artillery toys are for boys and the dolls are for girls. However, it is not shocking that we accept gender stereotyping and try to fit in the harsh models of feminine and masculine. For example, women players and especially basketball players are afraid of losing their feminineness. To avoid this, they are trying to look more feminine while playing the