Gender Roles Stereotypes Essays

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This is especially true in children and young adults who are still searching for a personal identity.

“From the moment we’re born, each one of us is fed on other people’s beliefs.

According to the media, the kind of woman women want to be is one that is “caring, emotional, home-loving…guided above all by their feelings” (Martin).

Women are to take a back seat in comparison to males.

With the media being such a prevalent influence in American households, children are extremely likely to pick up on the lifestyle depictions present in the entertainment they watch.

These images shape children’s thoughts and imagination regarding their own lifestyle and opinions.Women contrary to this description are seen as bad and rebellious.“A woman who stands up for herself is no longer a woman” (Martin).“Whether right or wrong,…imagination is shaped by the pictures seen…Consequently, they lead to stereotypes that are hard to shake” (Lippmann qtd. Everything a person learns must come from something or someone else.Unfortunately, these women also tend to make mistakes, and “when things go wrong, and of course with women they often do, they’re shown as clumsy, helpless, [and] panic stricken” (Martin).For example, Lucy of the classic series I love Lucy is consistently depicted in scenes in which her clumsy behavior results in over-dramatic failure which leads her to become panicked and helpless.Katha Pollitt believes in this embedded social stereotype, and explores it deeper in her essay “The Smurfette Principle”.Pollitt claims that the media portrays the message that “boys are central, girls are peripheral”, and that “girls exist only in relation to boys” (568).She discovered a recurring theme in the Media she coined “The Smurfette Principle” in which “a group of male buddies will be accented by a lone female, stereotypically defined” (Pollitt 568).She defines this stereotype as “a little-sister type” who “tags along” with the males (Pollitt 568).