Summary:
Explores how girls and boys are affected differently by different kind of media. Considers what they learn from watching different types of media. Describes how the media reinforces gender stereotypes.
"Reflections of Girls in the Media" is a statistical study of female roles. As both girls and boys move from childhood to adolescence, they begin to prepare for future occupational roles. Adolescents look to many different kinds of sources for guidance and they receive messages from a range of media, such as television, movies, magazines, music videos, T.V. commercials, and advertisements. Media has greater influence on girls than boys. There are four major causes and effects that reflect girls in the media. The media offers girls strong and positive role model to show self-reliant, honesty, intelligence, and efficiency to achieve their goals. The media contains stereotypical messages about relationships, priorities, and appearance. Ranges of media do send girls similar messages, both positive and negative, which increase their influence through repetition.
The media often supports girl's stereotypes about appearances and priorities. The media emphasize troubling stereotypes about the relative importance of appearance to women, while careers are more important for men than women. "Media's female portrayals send girls messages emphasizing a woman's ideal appearance and the important of this appearance." Women are spending more time in appearance-relative activities such as shopping and grooming. In movies, 31% of women and 7% of men can be seen "grooming" and "shopping." Women are more likely than men to make comments about their appearance, on T.V. 28% of women compared to 10% of men, in movies 58% of women compared to 24% of men.
The roles that played by a range of media context of relationships, which will affects girl's relationship with others. "Women are most often portrayed in the context of relationships. On the other hand, men are most often seen in the context of careers. Most women are likely motivated by the desire to have a romantic relationship, in movies 35% of women and on T.V. 32% of women compared to 20% of men. Men are spending more time on their job of far more often than women in all media. More women than men are seen dating across a range of media.
Most importantly, a range of media does send girls similar messages, both positive and negative, which increase their influence through repetition. Young people are getting conflicting messages from television shows. Some kids see women portrayed as good role models. However, some kids are very aware of the ways in which television reflects and may reinforce some gender stereotypes. "Girls and boys think television shows the importance of having a career or job for both men and women." Majorities of both girls and boys said qualities such as confidence, problem solving, intelligence, and wanting to be in a relationship are equally displayed by male and female television characters. Some girls want to look like the character they see on television and to be a model girl. They also want to look like, dress, and fix their hairstyle like a character on television.
Girls are more affected by a range of media. They try to change their images, appearance and their behaviours. Media offers girls strong positive role models. Women in the media are often shown as independent, depending first upon themselves to solve their own problem, and shown being self-reliant and using honesty, intelligence, and efficiency to achieve their goals. "In the media favoured by teenage girls, women are more often portrayed as strong positive characters-offering girls role models to emulate and imitate." In TV programs 35% of women and 32% of men rely on themselves to solve their problems, and 39% of women and 38% of men depend on themselves to achieve their goals.
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