what media theory relates to the development of stereotypes over time?
Women have historically been underrepresented and misrepresented in stereotypical roles inside mainstream media.
This post focuses on symbolic annihilation, the cult of femininity and the male gaze as examples of this, and so looks at whether things have changed in contempo decades.
Under-representation and symbolic annihilation
Gaye Tuchman (1978) developed the concept of Symbolic Anything to refer to the nether-representation of women in a narrow range of social roles, while men were represented in a full range of social and occupational roles.
Tuchman also argued that women's achievements were often not reported or trivialised and oftentimes seen as less important than things similar their looks
Co-ordinate to Tuchman, women were ofttimes represented in roles linked to gender stereotypes, specially those related to housework and motherhood – a proficient example of this being washing powder advertisements in which mothers and small-scale daughters are working together, while men and boys are the ones covered in mud. This postal service has some first-class examples of such stereotypes.
Ferguson (1980) conducted a content analysis of women's magazines from the finish of WWII to 1980 and plant that representations were organised effectually what she chosen the cult of femininity, based on traditional, stereotypical female roles and values: caring for others, family, union, and concern for advent.
Ferguson noted that teenage magazines aimed at girls did offer a broader range of female representations, only at that place was still a focus on him, home and looking proficient for him.
The Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation in 2006 found that there was little coverage of women's sport, but what piddling coverage there was had a tendency to trivialise, sexualise and devalue women's sporting achievements. All the same, this later example may be something that has changed considerably over the last decade (see below).
Misrepresentations (myths and stereotypes)
In 'The Mouse that Roared' Henry Giroux argued that women were represented in a narrow, restricted and distorted range of roles.
Supporting evidence for Giroux lies in the historical representation of female characters in Disney Films – where the typical female character is a sexualised withal fragile princess who needs to exist rescued by a stronger male grapheme.
Examples of where Disney reinforces female person stereotypes include:
- Snow White – who cleans the house of the male dwarves and is eventually rescued by a male person prince considering she is pretty.
- Beauty and the Beast – In which Belle endures an abusive and fierce beast in society to redeem him.
- Ariel – who gives up her voice to win the prince with her body.
- Mulan – who wins the state of war almost unmarried handed merely to return domicile to exist romanced.
This weblog post from Gild Pages is well worth a read on this topic.
Laura Mulvey 'The Male Gaze'
Laura Mulvey studied cinema films and developed the concept of the Male Gaze to describe how the camera lens eyed up the female person characters for the sexual viewing pleasance of men.
The Male Gaze occurs when the camera focuses on women'due south bodies, especially breasts, bums and things, and spends besides long lingering on these areas when it isn't necessary.
The male person gaze of the camera puts the audience in the perspective of the heterosexual men – woman are displayed as a sexual object for both the characters in the film and the spectator – thus the man emerges as the dominant strength and the woman is passive under the active (sexual) gaze of the man.
The overall upshot of this is that women become objectified as sex activity objects, rather than being represented as whole people.
Mulvey argued that the Male Gaze occurred in film because heterosexual men were in control of the camera.
Video summarizing all of the above:
This is a very useful vodcast outlining the archetype theories of the poor representation of women in the media historically:
Changes to the representations of women?
The roles of women in society take inverse considerably since these historical analyses of women's representations: since the 1970s women at present occupy a much wider range of roles and equality with men.
David Gauntlett in 'Media Gender and Identity' argues that at that place has been an increment in the diversity of representations and roles of women in the media since the 1970s, and a respective decrease in stereotypical representations, which broadly reflects wider social changes.
The representation of women in films
In that location accept been several films in recent decades with 'strong' lead female characters who are fierce, tough and resourceful, and thus arguably subvert hegemonic concepts of masculinity. Arguably a watershed moment in this was the 1979 film 'Alien' in which the female person lead character Ripley outlives her male person colleagues and ultimately kills the Conflicting threat.
Since so a number of female person heroines have featured as the pb characters in various action movies such Terminator two, the Tomb Raider films, Kill Bill, and The Hunger Games.
Yet, rather than subverting hegemonic concepts of masculinity, it could be argued that such films still perpetuate the 'beauty myth' as all the to a higher place pb female characters are slim and attractive.
The Bechdel Test
The Bechdel Test is a elementary test which presents a quantitative analysis of the representation of women in relation to men in pic. To pass the test a motion-picture show has to pass iii tests…
- It has to have at least ii (named) women in it
- Who talk to each other
- Above something other than a man
The website in a higher place allows y'all to search for films which passed the test by yr, and there is clear evidence that female person characters are more visible and contained year on year, but there are still many films which practice non pass this simple basic test.
The representation of women in Game of Thrones
At beginning glance, in that location seem to exist a number of positive female person characters in Game of Thrones – the assassin and ultimate killer of the Water ice Male monarch Arya Stark being the about stand up-out instance, with other positive female characters including Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei Lannister, Brienne of Tarth, Sansa Stark (one time she gets through her abusive human relationship).
Still, diverse feminist commentators have argued that all of these positive representations are let down by the end of series 8 with Brienne falling apart emotionally because of her dearest for Jamie Lannister, Daenerys literally going mad, Sansa patently being strong because of her previous calumniating relationship (rather than in spite of it), and with all the anonymous women cowering in the crypt during the battle with the Ice Male monarch, while all the anonymous men are exterior fighting.
A further Feminist argument is that all of these women are portrayed equally strong individuals who are potent because they adopt male characteristics, and ultimately information technology is male violence which wins the solar day rather than more diverse forms of feminine power.
The representations of women in the news
In 2015 the Global Media Monitoring grouping conducted quantitative content analysis of 1960 sources covering 431 announcers and reporters.
They found that:
- The overall presence of women as sources was 28%.
- Compared to 2010 data, the number of women sources as a proportion of all sources, had decreased by 3 per cent.
- Women connected to remain largely confined to the sphere of the private, emotional and subjective, while men withal dominate the sphere of the public, rational and objective.
- Women were significantly nether-represented in hard news stories and in all the authoritative, professional and elite source occupational categories and are, instead, significantly over-represented as voices of the general, public (homemaker, parent, pupil, kid) and in the occupational groups near associated with 'women's piece of work', such every bit health and social and childcare worker, office or service industry worker.
Looking at the function women performed in stories, their contribution as experts (twenty%) and spokespeople (25%) were low, instead, they were mostly called upon to phonation pop stance (54%) or speak from their personal experience including as center-witnesses or speak from their ain subject position.
The persistence of the Beauty Myth?
Tebbel (2000) argues that women are nether more pressure level than ever before to suit to the Beauty Myth. She argues that the body and faces of real women have been symbolically annihilated, replaced past computer manipulated, airbrushed, artificially images.
Killborn argues that media representations present women equally 'mannequins' – size zero, alpine and thin, and with perfect blemish-gratis skin.
Orbach further argues that the media continues to associate slimness with wellness, happiness, success and popularity
The representations of women in advertising
Some recent evidence seems to claiming the persistence of the Beauty Myth….
There seems to accept been progress in this surface area in recent years. In 2015, Protein Earth launched its 'Beach Body Set' advertising campaign, and while this clearly reinforced the Dazzler Myth stereotype, it prompted a significant backlash with several of the advertisements existence vandalised, and many women posting images of their ordinary bodies on social media equally a criticism of the overt trunk shaming involved with Protein World's advert.
Since 2015, there has been an increment in the diversity of representations of women in advert, for example:
- Dove's Real Beauty' campaign72 featured a various range of torso shapes and ethnicities.
- Sport England has been running its successful 'This Girl Can' campaign since 2015, which has since evolved into the 'fit got existent' campaign:
In 2017, The Advert Standards Authorization launched new guidelines on avoiding gender stereotyping in advertising and in 2019 banned two ads from airing in the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland considering they reinforced gender stereotypes.
Finally, UN women has recently launched its 'Unstereotype Alliance', which challenges gender stereotypes in ad on a global scale. Supporters of this initiative include advert industry companies such as Unilever, P&G, WPP, Diageo, Google and Facebook.
A Level Sociology of Media Bundle
If you similar this sort of thing, then you might like my A Level Sociology of the Media Revision Bundle which contains the post-obit:
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57 pages of revision notes covering all of the sub-topics within the folklore of the media - xix heed maps in pdf and png format – covering near sub-topics inside the sociology of the media.
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Source: https://revisesociology.com/2019/09/02/media-representations-women/
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