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Gender Norms In The Media

Decent Essays

Media is defined as any form of communication; however, the term is mainly used for television, radio, and the Internet. “Regardless of the form it takes, media holds the power to construct and reflect our own sense of identity, in both affirmative and detrimental ways” (199). In American society, the media makes many assumptions based on gender, race, and religion that directly affects how people in a society view each other. Media creates many assumptions on the female gender that generates people’s views on femininity.
“… marketers are constantly conflating the separate constructs of sex, gender, and sexuality. They assume female means feminine means heterosexual. They assume all women are feminine and would like a pink car. They assume …show more content…

Women are used in the media as decoration objects, and they are often sexualized on their appearance. The media uses this representation of women as a way to sell beauty products: skin care, body care, and hair care. This creates certain expectations of what a typical woman should be. Women according to media assumptions should be well maintained and beautiful. The media also interprets women mainly in home setting taking care of family life. Therefore, products used in housework are mainly aimed towards women. For example, laundry supplies, dishwashing liquid, and vacuums. The #1 American Target Advertisement used this type of assumption when they put all of the cleaning supplies in the woman’s cart instead of the man’s …show more content…

One religion that contains bias from the media is the Amish. “Amish settlements have become a cliché for refusing technology. Tens of thousands of people wear identical, plain, homemade clothing, cultivate their rich fields with horse-drawn machinery, and live in houses lacking that basic modern spirt called electricity” (Rheingold 221). The media takes a very sophisticated belief into an assumption that suggests that Amish do not use technology at all. Another religion that contains bias from the media is Islam. According to the media, Islam is a religion associated with terrorism. This media assumption is based on the, “emergence of the self-proclaimed Islamic State group (ISIS) which allegedly shows videos of the beheadings of their prisoners who are most often journalists” (Espiritu). This has caused people to use the terms Muslim and Terrorist interchangeably. Not all Muslims who associate with Islam are terrorists. For example, Malala Yousafzai, a Muslim, is the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner and an education activist. Media also makes assumptions on the religion for Jews, Judaism. Jews are often interpreted as incredibly prosperous, cheap, and unkind. “In truth, Jewish people can be wealthy or poor, intelligent or less intelligent, kind or otherwise” (Media Portrayals of Religion:

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