1. Introduction
We live in the era of mass media, where advertisement is almost unavoidable as it is displayed in magazines, television, internet and radio. This, however, poses an issue due to an existence of gender stereotypes in commercials and these might have a negative influence on one’s self esteem (Daniels 2009, 401). Gender stereotypes are gender-based believes about appropriate appearance or behavior of a human. Current paper is aiming to investigate this issue, because gender stereotypes can be unfair and might convey a misleading message. This research work will demonstrate that the most vulnerable groups of population are adolescents as they have not formed their self-perception to the full extent; at the same time, gender stereotypes influence females more as their image in advertisements tend to be highly biased and oversexualized. In the following assignment, main sources and types of gender stereotypes will be discussed along with the breakdown of its influence on various age groups, followed by the description of existing controversies on the subject matter.
2. Identification of main sources
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As for example, commercials on American MTV channel tend to portray women having fit bodies in 77.4% of cases and wearing suggestive or extremely revealing clothing in 53.8% of cases compared to 93.5% of neutrally dressed male characters (Signorielli, Mcleod, and Healy 1994). Furthermore, women in advertisements fall into younger age category than males and they are 3.5 times more likely to be portrayed in home environment compared to men portrayed predominantly in work environment (Prieler 2015, 280-281). It is possible to assume that advertisements on American television in many cases place emphasis on attractiveness of a woman and her role of a housekeeper, while men are stereotypically assumed to be examples of corporate