October 22, 2003
Communicating Gender
Language and nonverbal behaviors play critical roles in creating and perpetuating gendered identities and social patterns.
1. Language Defines Gender -
The most fundamental implication of symbolic ability is that symbols define phenomena. We use symbols to name objects, people, feelings, experiences, and other phenomena. The names we apply emphasize particular aspects of reality and neglect others. What we emphasize is guided in part by cultural values, so that we name those things or aspects of things that are important in society's perspective.
Our language negates women's experience by denying and dismissing women's importance and sometimes their very existence. In so doing, it represents men and their experiences as the norm and women and their ways as deviant. This marginalizes women.
Example: Male generic language excludes women. Male generic language purports to include both women and men, yet specifically refers only to men. e.g. mankind
Research demonstrates conclusively that masculine generics are perceived as referring predominantly or exclusively to men. example urban man vs. urban life.
One of the effects of male generic language is that it makes men seem more prominent and women less prominent than they are in real life.
Male generic language reduces awareness of women and tends to result in perceiving women as excluded or exceptions to the rule. This affects comprehension of language, views of personal identity, and perceptions of women's presence in various spheres of life.
Spotlighting - which is the practice of highlighting a person's sex. Terms such as "lady doctor" and women lawyer define women as the exception in professions and thereby reinforce the idea that men are the standard.
Female suffixes - hero-heroine, steward-stewardess, and actor-actress. There is one semantic area in which the masculine is not the base or more powerful word. This is in the area dealing with sex and marriage. When someone refers to a virgin, a listener will probably think of a female, unless the speaker specifies male or uses a masculine pronoun. The same is true for prostitute.
In relation to marriage, there is much linguistic evidence showing that weddings are more important to women than to men. The word bride appears in bridal attendant, bridal gown, bridesmaid, bridal shower, and even bridegroom. The importance of marriage to a woman is also shown by the fact that when a marriage ends in death, the woman gets the tile of widow. A man gets the derived title of widower.
Unmarried status for a woman is still seen in a negative light; not the same for a man. Think of the difference between old maid or spinster and a confirmed bachelor.
Women much more than men tend to be defined by appearance and/or relationships with others.
In our culture girls often have names taken from small, aesthetically pleasing items or characteristics, Lilly, Jewel, Ruby, Precious, Desiree, Stella, Vanessa (butterfly). Boys are more likely to be given names with meanings of power and strength. Richard (strong king) Martin (from Mars, the God of War).
The cultural association of women with relationships is explicitly expressed in the words Miss and Mrs., which designate, respectively, unmarried and married women. There are no parallel titles that define men in terms of whether they are married.
The still-prevalent tradition of a wife adopting her husband's name on marrying. Symbolically, she exchanges her individual identity for one based on her relationship to a man: Mrs. Roger Keller
Reluctance to use titles and occupations for women -example - difficulty in addressing Mr. and Dr. Keller
2. Language Evaluates Gender - Language is not neutral. It reflects cultural values and is a powerful influence on our perceptions. Related to gender, language expresses cultural devaluations of females and femininity. It does this by trivializing, deprecating, and diminishing women and things defined as feminine.
Semantic Derogation - the process by which the meaning or connotations of words are debased over time.
Women are often trivialized by language. They are frequently demeaned by metaphors that equate them with food (dish, cookie, cupcake, hot tomato) and animals (fox, chick, pig, dog, cow, bitch) or as possessions (his wife, secretary).
If a man is called a fruit, his masculinity is being questioned. Animal metaphors also illustrate the different expectations for males and females. Men are referred to as studs, bucks and wolves while women are referred to with such metaphors as kitten, bunny, beaver, bird, chick and lamb.
Matron and Patron (from the Latin mother and father) have changed over years. Matron now connotes a woman who oversees the bathrooms or the prison. A patron connotes a powerful supporter, eg a patron of the arts.
The Armed Forces are aware of the trivialization, and therefore develops words to hide the association of tasks with the feminine and thus, the inferiority of the task.
Waitress changes to Orderly
Nurse to medic or corpsman
Secretary to clerk-typist
Assistant to adjutant
Dishwasher or kitchen helper to KP (kitchen police)
Women are also deprecated by language that devalues them. 220 terms for sexually permissive women but only 22 for sexually promiscuous men.
Sir and madam. Sir is a term of respect, while madam has acquired the specialized meaning of a brothel manager. Something similar has happened to master and mistress. Another example call boy and call girl.
Women are connected with negative connotations; men with positive connotations.
She's a shrew. He is a shrewd businessman.
Second issue of language: Sociolingistics is the field that investigates language variation that is socially conditioned. Do women and men speak different languages? Because males and females tend to be socialized into distinct speech communities, they learn different rules about the purposes of communication and ways to indicate support, interest, and involvement. Because women and men have some dissimilar rules for talk, they often misread each other's meanings and misunderstand each other's motives.
Gendered Speech Communities - also called female register or male register - or speech style - linguists use the term "register" to indicate a variety of language characteristics defined according to its use in social situation.
Speech communities - exist when people share understandings about goals of communication, strategies for enacting those goals, and ways of interpreting communication.
In many ways women and men operate from dissimilar assumptions about the goals and strategies of communication.
Female Register or Style –
Goal: For most women, communication is a primary way to establish and maintain relationships with others. For women talk is the essence of relationships.
Consistent with this primary goal, women's speech tends to display identifiable features that foster connections, support, closeness, and understanding.
Characteristics of female register. Tentative style:
Verbal hedges - "I kind of feel you may be overreacting."
In other situations they qualify statements by saying "I'm probably not the best judge of this, but..."
Another way to keep talk provisional is to tag a question onto a statement in a way that invites another to respond: "That was a pretty good movie, wasn't it?"
Question intonation in declarative contexts: In response to question, "When will dinner be ready?" "Around six o'clock?" as though seeking approval and asking whether that time will be acceptable."
Tentative communication could also be viewed as positive rather than weak. It leaves open the door for others to respond and express their opinions.
Controversy about tentativeness in women's speech. R. Lakoff who first noted that women use more hedges, qualifiers, and tag questions than men claimed these represent uncertainty and lack of confidence. Calling women's speech powerless, Lakoff argued that it reflects women's socialization into subordinate roles and low self-esteem. Others say it expresses women's desires to keep conversation open and to include others. It appears that the situation is important, example, a female lawyer and male lawyer's language in court are more similar.
Another form of female register is the use of intensifiers (speaking emphatically as if in Italics) example: "He's so wonderful." and what Lakoff refers to as "empty" adjectives or adverbs. Some of these could be contained in a word list that is distinctively female. "This is a divine party." "Such a darling room," A study by McMillan and her colleagues (1977) indicates that in group discussions women use six times more intensifiers than men. An exclusive pattern for woman is that they often literally intensify the intensifier by heavily emphasizing and elongating the word. "it was so-o-o- wonderful." An emotional overtone is added to a simple declarative sentence.
Vocabulary - women express a greater range of words for colors, textures, food and cooking. When parents talk to their children about emotional aspect of events, they use a greater number of "emotion" words with daughters than with sons.
Finally, female register includes forms of speaking that are more polite and indirect.. Hypercorrect grammar and careful enunciation.
Socialization into language forbids profanity in general, but more so for females. Men tell "dirty" jokes, and women are often the targets of them.
Women tend to use substitute expletives that are deemed more acceptable (Oh darn)
Women often seem to lack a sense of humor. Inability to tell a joke; frequently "missing the point " in jokes told by men.
Men's Speech - Masculine speech communities tend to regard talk as a way to exert control, preserve independence, and enhance status. Conversation is often seen as an arena for proving oneself and negotiating prestige.
A second prominent feature of men's talk is instrumentality - speech is used to accomplish instrumental objectives. As we have seen, men are socialized to do things, achieve goals. In conversation, this often expressed through problem-solving efforts that focus on getting information, discovering facts, and suggesting solutions. “I’ll fix it for you.” (Deborah Tannen)
Another feature of men's communication is conversational command. Despite jokes about women's talkativeness, research indicates that in most contexts, men talk more than women. Further, men engage in other verbal behaviors that sustain prominence in interaction. They may reroute conversations by using what another said as a jump-off point for their own topic, or they may interrupt. Men use interruptions to control conversation by challenging other speakers or wresting the talk stage from the, while women interrupt to indicate interest and to respond. Men tend to express themselves in fairly absolute, assertive ways. Compared with women, their language is typically more forceful, direct, and authoritative.
William O'Barr cautions, “We must be careful to avoid "essentializing" these differences. Not every woman, not every man speaks in a particular way. Second, it is language socialization, not biology, that gives rise to the differences between male and female patterns in language.
O'Barr and others link the different patterns to social structure."They are interested in how a particular linguistic practice may de distributed socially. Do differences between language patterns help perpetuate differences between men and women with regard to power, influence, and income?
O'Barr studied gendered language in court. He found that many of the characteristics Lakoff had noted do indeed occur in court, but they did not characterize the speech of all women, nor were they limited to women. He reformulated the phenomenon and called it powerless language to describe its deferential nature.
The characteristics in courts of law that were found included:
Abundant use of hedges
Hesitation forms: Words and phrases that carry no substantive meaning but only fill possible speech pauses such as "uh", "Um" or "well."
Overuse of polite forms
Question intonation in declarative contexts
Frequent use of intensifiers.
Nonverbal Communication
Like language, nonverbal communication is learned through interaction with others. Like verbal communication, nonverbal behaviors reflect and reinforce social views of gender and encourage individuals to embody them in distinctive feminine and masculine styles.
Artifacts - personal objects that influence how we see ourselves and express the identity we create for ourselves. The first gender artifact - pink and blue. Parents send artifactual messages through the toys they give to sons and daughters.
Proximity and Personal Space -
Proxemics - refers to space and our use of it.
Personal space - reserved for friends and acquaintances that extends from about one and a half to four feet Intimate distance - extends to about 18 inches.
Space is a primary means by which a culture designates who is important, who has privilege. Those who are more powerful have more space.
Consider who gets space in our society - Executives have large offices - secretaries have cubbyholes.
In the house - women have no room of their own.
Men sit at the head of the table.
Men have "off-limits" areas
Example - who controls the arm rest in an airplane
Territoriality - refers to ours sense of personal space or our private area that we don't want others to invade. Yet not everyone's territory is equally respected. People with power tend to invade the spaces of those with less power. Men invade women's spaces more than women invade men's spaces. Invasion of space are sometimes interpreted as sexual harassment because too much closeness communicates a level of intimacy that may be perceived as inappropriate in work and education situations.
Men tend to respond negatively and sometimes aggressively to defend their territory while women tend to yield space or free their territory rather than challenge the intruder.
Haptics - touch - Parents tend to touch sons less often and more roughly than they touch daughters. Daughters are handled more gently and protectively. Early tactile messages teach boys not to perceive touching as affiliative, while girls learn to expect touching form others and to use touch affiliatively.
While women are more likely than men to initiate hugs and touches that express support, affection, and comfort, men more often use touch to direct others, assert power, and express sexual interest. These gendered patterns of proxemic and touch behavior are linked to the problem of sexual harassment. The meaning of touching depends on more than touch per se. - How we interpret touch depends on factors such as its duration, intensity, and frequency and the body parts touching and being touched.
Men rarely touch one another, especially in what would be seen as an emotional display. Men shake hands. Fairly intimate displays of physical contact in sporting events - but this has its limits.
Kinesics (Facial and Body Motion) - bodily movement, posture, and general demeanor, eye contact
This area of nonverbal communication reflects a number of gendered patterns, for example, Smiling (check your high school yearbook ) is more likely in women.
In addition women tend to tilt their heads in deferential positions, condense their size, and allow others to invade their spaces.
Women - facial restraint in showing anger - often gets masked by crying which is more acceptable.
In decoding nonverbal cues, not only do women rely more on facial information than do men but women also exhibit a greater variety of facial expressions.
Men too tend to enact patterns they were taught by displaying less emotion through smiles or other facial expressions, (other than anger).
Men and women tend to differ in how they use their eyes to communicate. Women signal interest and involvement with others by sustaining eye contact, while men generally do not hold eye contact. These patterns reflect lessons form childhood in which girls learned to maintain relationships and boys learned to view for status - to show interest in others may jeopardize your own position. Women not only give but also receive more facial expressions of interest and friendliness.
Using larger gestures, taking more space and being more likely to encroach on others' territories. In combination, these gender-differentiated patterns suggest that women's facial and body motions generally signal they are approachable, friendly, and unassuming. Men's facial and body communications, in contrast, tend to indicate they are reserved and in control.
Part II: Forms of media as ways to communicate gender.
Why are we interested in studying media? We want to know what effects media has on gender.
The mass media and their role as a gender socializer.
Argument that the media only give the public what it expects, wants, or demands = reflection hypothesis. Simply stated, the reflection hypothesis holds that media content mirrors the behaviors and relationships, and values and norms most prevalent in a society.
However, media analysts also point out that, far from just passively reflecting culture, the media actively shape and create culture, i.e. the media selects items for attention - they set an agenda for public opinion.
The media are the chief sources of information for most people, as well as the focus of their leisure activity.
There is considerable evidence indicating that many media consumers, particularly heavy television viewers, tend to uncritically accept media content as fact.
Some early theories, modeling theory and identification theory posit that audience members usually children model their behavior after what they see in the media (in most cases, television). Study results are inconsistent with individual factors such as family interaction and peer acceptance having more effect on how children respond than hat they see in the media.
Other theories such as uses and gratifications theory support the concept that audiences are active participants using the media for entertainment, relaxation, stimulation or company.
Cultivation theory focuses on the "skewed " sense of reality heavy viewers of television hold and how that affects their view of the real world.
So – if we are interested in its effects, what are important questions to ask?
Question 1- Who is portrayed in the media? Answer: White men; Underrepresentation of women and minorities.
Question 2 -How are they portrayed? Answer: stereotypical usually
Question 3 –Who participates in the creation of media? Answer: Predominantly men
Question 4 – What are the effects of media? Answer: mostly negative
It has been argued that with respect to their treatment of women, the media are guilty of symbolic annihilation. (Tuchman) That is, the media traditionally have ignored, trivialized, or condemned women. Symbolic annihilation is the absence of experience of a group of people in the media. Symbolic annihilation occurs not only in terms of gender, but also in terms of race and ethnicity, social class, age, sexual orientation, and physical ability.
The absence of the experiences of women and minorities signals to the audience, both women and men, that the views of people other than white, heterosexual middle-class males are unimportant.
Different Types of Media:
Newspapers and Magazines - Women are often relegated to a secondary, “non=news’ section of the paper. 1996 study - 15% of front-page news references were of females - sharp decline back to levels of 1990. Moreover, men wrote 65% of front-page, local news articles and opinion pieces that appeared in the papers studied. Women received better coverage in the small and medium market paper than in the large market metropolitan papers.
1996 they were 15 percent of references and 33% of bylines and photos.
Female-centered news stories, reporters were likely to mention an individual’s sex, marital status or parenthood, or physical appearance.
Newspapers - Although women make up 52% of the population in 1989, women represented 11% of the people quoted in the front-page newspapers.
Second point – Who participates in the creation of newspapers? Many analysts have emphasized that most of the staff at the nation’s 1,5000 daily newspapers are men. 37% women. 11.4% of newsroom staff are people of color. Women are 31 percent of newsroom supervisors, but are significantly underrepresented in top executive and management positions. For example, only 19.4% of newspapers have female executive editors and just 8% are headed by women publishers.
Although women are now about 60% of journalism school graduates, they account for only 30% of new hires at newspapers.
Gender and Magazines - magazines target specific racial and ethnic groups, gender, and ages. as well as particular interests or life experiences. So how are men and women portrayed in magazines?
Traditionally, women’s magazines have promoted a “cult of femininity”, that is, a definition of femininity as a narcissistic absorption with oneself a- with one’s physical appearance, with occupational success and with success in affairs of the heart.
Both in adult and teen magazines for female readers, there has been an intensified focus on sex in recent years. McRobbie sees this as a reconstruction of male sexual identities that promotes boldness in women’s behavior. --- The ultimate goal remains getting and keeping a man, even if the strategy is no longer romance, but rather aggressive sex appeal.
In magazines, women are to be made over, a theme (with instructions) found in nearly ever issue of women’s and girl’s fashion magazines. Renzetti and Curran’s informal research confirms this (although they found Latina more balanced).
Most men’s magazines can still be placed in one of three categories: finance/business/technology, sports/hobbies, and sex. Sex, which we have seen is by no means absent from women’s magazines, is still typically discussed in women’s periodicals in terms of interpersonal relationships, whereas men’s sex-oriented magazines objectify and depersonalize sex. A common theme is how men can manipulate women into having sex with them and how they can better control or “manage “ the women in their lives.
The low priority that men’s magazines give to interpersonal relationships is reinforced b the advertisements that dominate their pages. - advertisements - alcohol, cigarettes, sunglasses, athletic gear, stereo equipment,
Similar to women’s magazines, periodicals intended for men generate their own gender images and ideals. Normative masculinity according to these magazines does not include establishing a long-term relationship with a woman. Instead the real man is free and adventurous. He is a risk taker who purses his work and his hobbies, including in this latter category relationships with women - with vigor. He is concerned about his person appearance but not in an all-consuming sense as women seem to be.
Television:
Who is portrayed?
Women account for 39% of all major characters. Gender stereotypes frequently intersect with racial and ethnic stereotypes on television. Female or male, racial and ethnic minorities continue to be underrepresented on television.
There are three times as many white men as women on prime-time television.
Children’s programming - males outnumber females by two to one
Some changes in the 1990s
20% of TV characters in the 1990s were minority women and men - 12% black 1 % Latino and 2% Asian, Less than 1 % were Native American. In real life 27% of the population were minority group members at this time (12% black, 11% Latino, and 4% Asian and Native Americans)
Also underrepresented is the single fastest growing group of Americans - older people. As a country, we are aging so that people over 60 make up a major part of our populations; within this group, women significantly outnumber men. Older people not only are underrepresented in media but also are represented inaccurately. - sick, dependent, fumbling, and passive. - often presented as victims
How are they portrayed?
Not only do women have fewer role on television, but the characters played by women tend to be younger and less mature than male characters and, therefore, less authoritative. 65% of the female characters are in their 20s or 30s.
Young female characters are typically thin and physically attractive. 46% of the women are television compared with just 16% of men are thin or very thin. In general, male television characters are given more leeway in terms of their appearance.
Female and men portrayals have changed somewhat in recent years. Women characters work outside the home –although only 28% are shown on the job compared with 41% of male characters. Their male partners are nowadays depicted as idealized family men, who are sensitive to and supportive of their wives. These male characters are portrayed as quite willing to do more than an equal share of housework and child care. However, men on television are rarely sown ding housework(1 to 3 percent compared to 20 to 27 percent of women - 1197 study) .
The rule seems to be that a woman may be strong and successful if and only if she also exemplifies traditional stereotypes of femininity –beauty and an identity linked to a man.
Stereotypical Portrayals of Women and Men
Men: Media reinforce long-standing cultural ideals of masculinity: Men are presented as hard, tough, independent, sexually aggressive, unafraid, violent, totally in control of all emotions and - above all - in no way feminine.
Equally interesting is how males are not presented. Specifically, there are seldom portrayed as nurturers - not involved in their families - seldom shown doing housework. Typically, represented as uninterested in and incompetent at homemaking, cooking and child care.
Only about 5% of television writers executives, and producers are women.
TV - Network News
The greatest move toward equality of the sexes in broadcasting has taken place in local television newsrooms. By 1997 98% of local television news stations had women on their staff; 37% of local TV news workforce.
Overall, women have made fewer inroads on national network newscasts than local ones. 19% of network news staff - the % of network news stories filed by women was 22%
In a study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, the number of women correspondents covering network news rose form 19% in 1998 to 24% in 1999.
Coverage by minority correspondents rose from 10 to 14%.
Overall, whites covered 86% of the stories on network news and 76% of the stories were covered by males in 1999.
Newscasts - Women make up about 16% of newscasters . Female newscasters are expected to by younger, more physically attractive, and less outspoken than males
Minority men and women remain dramatically underrepresented on the network news, with only slight improvements in recent years.
Gender Messages in Advertisements/Commericals
The average American sees 37,000 commercials a year.
Advertisements portrays images of gender that the advertising industry deems profitable. According to advertising analysts, for male consumers the message is typically to buy a particular product and get the “sweet young thing” associated with it., whereas for female consumers the message is to buy the product in order to be the sweet young thing.
Female models are significantly more likely than male models to be depicted in subordinate poses. Female models re more frequently solitary and also appear more often as “partials,’ Images are sometimes diminished.
Men hold positions of authority –
Voice-overs - typically male. - 75%
Women less often shown “on the job” in commercials - activities are more likely to be relating to romance and relationships.
At the same time studies show that the sexually exploitative use of women in advertising has increased since 1970. In such advertisements, the female model has a purely decorative role; in other words, she has no clear relationship to the product and is shown simply because of her physical attractiveness and sex appeal. Researchers have found that the percentage of advertisements depicting men in decorative roles has also increased in recent years”
There is a second, less known way in which advertisements contribute to stereotypes of women as focused on others and men as focused on work. Gloria Steinem - advertisers control some to most of the content in magazines. In exchange for placing an ad, a company receives "complementary copy" which is one or more articles that increase the market appeal of its product. so a soup company that takes out an ad might be given a three-page story on how to prepare meals using that brand of soup; likewise, an ad for hair coloring products might be accompanied by interviews with famous women who choose to dye their hair. thus, the message of advertisers is multiplied by magazine content, which readers often mistakenly assume is independent of advertising.
Goffman’s early work 1979 concentrated on the subtleties of posture and relative size and positioning of hands, eyes, knees and other parts of the body in ads. A man is pictured taller than a woman unless he is socially inferior to her. Men and boys are shown instructing women and girls. A woman’s eye is averted to the man in the picture with her, but a man’s eye is averted only to a superior. women’s hands caress or barely touch. They are rarely shown grasping, manipulating, or creatively shaping. Women have faraway looks in their eyes, especially in the presence of men. Women act like children and are often depicted with children.
More recent data indicate that women continue to be depicted in terms of Goffman’s categories. We see this in the MTV women - often they are just body parts - not full women. Archer found that “face-ism” still dominate for men as does “body-ism” for women.
Recently studies on the portrayal of African Americans, specifically African American women, in the media focus on colorism, especially in advertising, television news, print news editorial and women's magazines.
Colorism is the underlying belief in the media that people of color are more attractive and appear more intelligent when their hair and facial features more closely look like those of whites i.e. African American women who look like white women are most often represented in the media.
Jeff Yang and Angelo Ragaza found that "Women of color in the three top women's magazines increased from 0% in the late 1960s to 4.9% in the late 1970s but the end of the 1980s this percentage had dropped back down to 1.6 percent.
Lance Strate “Beer Commercials: A Manual of Masculinity” (handout)
Analyzes beer commercials as carriers of social myths, in particular, the myth of masculinity.
”Myths are not falsehoods or fairy tales, but uncontested and generally unconscious assumptions that are so widely shared within a culture that they are considered natural, instead of recognized as products of unique historical circumstances. “
Thus, the myth of masculinity answers the question: What does it mean to be a man? This can be broken down into five separate questions:
What kinds of things do men do?
What kinds of settings do men prefer?
How do boys become men?
How do men related to each other?
How do men related to women?
What kinds of things do men do?
Drinking is presented as a central masculine activity, and beer as the beverage of choice. Drinking is rarely presented as an isolated activity, but rather is associated with a variety of occupational and leisure pursuits.
Work: Beer is integrated with the work world in three ways, First, it is represents in some commercials as the product of patient, skillful craftsmanship. Second beer serves as a reward for a job well done. “This Bud’s for you.”
Third, beer acts as a marker of the end of the work day, the signal of quitting time, the means or making the transition from work to leisure. (Miller Time)
Leisure – The men of beer commercials fill their leisure time in two ways: in active pursuits usually conducted in outdoor setting and in “hanging out” usually in bars. As it is in work, the key to men’s active play is the challenge it provides to physical and emotional strength, endurance, and daring.
When they are not engaged in physical activity, the men of beer commercials frequently seek out symbolic challenges and dangers by playing games such as poker and pool, and by watching professional sports.
The central theme of masculine leisure activity in beer commercials, then, is challenge, risk, and mastery – mastery over nature, over technology, over others in good natured combat and over oneself.
How do boys become men? In beer commercials, boys become men by earning acceptance from those who are already full-fledged members of the community of men. To earn acceptance the younger man must demonstrate that he can do the things that men do: take risks, meet challenges, face danger courageously and dominate his environment. In the work place, he demonstrates this by seizing opportunities to work, taking pride in his labor, proving his ability, persisting in the face of uncertainty, and learning to accept failure with equanimity.
How do men relate to each other?
In beer commercials, men are rarely found in solitary pursuits (and never drink alone), and only occasionally in one-to-one-relationships, usually involving father-son or mentor-protégé transactions. The dominant social context for male interaction is the group and team work and group loyalty rank high in the list of masculine values. Individualism and competition, by contrast, are downplayed and are acceptable only as long as they foster the cohesiveness of the group as a whole.
How do men relate to women? Although the world of beer commercials is often monopolized by men, some of the ads do feature male-female interaction in the form of courtship, as well as in more established relationships. The more significant danger in beer ads is loss of emotional self-control. Emotional control is also demonstrated by the male’s ability to divide his attention between his drinking and the pursuit of women.
When the commercials depict more established relationships, the emphasis shifts form romance and seduction to male activities in which women are reduced largely to the role of admiring onlookers. Men appear to value their group of friends over their female partners, and the women accept this. Women tend to be passive, not participating but merely watching as men perform physical tasks. In other words, they become the audience for whom men perform. For the most part, women know their place and do not interfered with male bonding.
Renzetti and Curran: Despite industry claims that sexism sells, research provides only qualified support for this position. Advertisements that use women’s sexuality to sell products to me do appear to be appealing to and effective with that constituency. Ads emphasizing sex also often appeal to teenagers of both sees. However such ad are ineffective with a large segment of adult female consumers. Other studies have shown that while consumers in general do like to see attractive models of both sexes in advertisements, the use of nudity, seminudity, and sexual innuendo may inhibit consumers’ ability to recall the products and the advertisements win which they appeared.
Consequences of images of Gender in the Media: What are their Effects?
Fostering Unrealistic and Limited Gender Ideals -
Many of the images dispensed by media are unrealistic. Most men are not as strong, bold, and successful as males on the screen. Few women are as slender, gorgeous, and well dressed as stars and models whose photographs are airbrushed and retouched to create their artificial beauty.
Modeling contributes to development of gender identity. We look to others - including mediated others- to define how we are supposed to be. Especially during the early years when children often do not clearly distinguish reality from fantasy, they seem susceptible to confusing media characters with real people.
Recent research indicates that, at least among children, there is a keen awareness of gender stereotypes on television. One national survey found that both girls and boys aged ten to 17 recognized the emphasis placed on physical attractiveness for females on television. Significantly more girls 69% than boys 40% wanted to be and look like a character on TV - even if they thought they were more preoccupied with their appearance
Clinicians and researchers maintain that unrealistic images of what we and our relationships should be contribute significantly to dissatisfaction and its consequences including feelings of inadequacy, anorexia, cosmetic surgery, and emotional difficulties.
In a study of 75 women students at Stanford University, the women reported they felt worse about their appearance after reading women’s magazines. This research suggests that TV viewing may affect an individual’s self-evaluation as well as more general perceptions about gender.
Research on advertising - Gender depictions in TV advertising may be understood as gender prescriptions by female viewers and may affect their real-life aspirations. In the study women who saw the stereotyped ads tended to stereotype their futures. (college students)
Lanis and Covell found that the men who saw the sexist advertisements increased their tendency to gender stereotype and also scored higher than other research participants on a scale measuring attitudes supportive of rape and sexual aggression. Interestingly, though, seeing the progressive advertisements had no effect on men’s attitudes.
Clearly this research points to the detrimental effects of sexist media portrayals, but it is also significant because it indicates that gender-fair media images can have a positive impact. The positive effects of pro-social media content are strongest for young children.
Pathologizing the Human Body -
One of the most damaging consequences of media’s images of women and men is that these images encourage us to perceive normal bodies and normal physical functions as problems. Examples of normal body functions becoming pathological are: gray hair, Premenstrual syndrome (After WWII and women were no longer need in the work force - the term premenstrual tension was coined and Greene and Dalton say it was used to define women as inferior employees. (1953)); menopause is another example.
Advertising is very effective in convincing us that we need products to solve problems we are unaware of until some clever pubic relations campaign persuades us that something natural about us is really unnatural and unacceptable.
Normalizing Violence Against Women
Is watching violence related to engaging in violence? 3 theories: there is no positive correlation, there is a positive correlation between observing violence and violent behavior. The most widely accepted theory is that observation of violence acts as a catalyst in a person with a predisposition to violence. However, when we continuously see aggression, physical assault, murder, rape, and other forms of violence depicted in media, we become desensitized to violence
There are 3 major theories about the relationships between violent viewing and violent behavior. One emphasizes the cathartic effect of violent viewing. This perspective says that viewing violence can actually reduce the violent drives of viewers because watching allows viewers to fantasize about violence, thereby releasing the tensions that may lead to real-life aggression. It has also been argued that this catharsis may lead viewers to take positive rather than violent action to remedy the problem.
Modeling Effect of violent viewing. Put simply, this perspective maintains that media violence teaches viewers to behave violently through imitation or modeling.
Catalytic effect of violent viewing. This position maintains that if certain conditions are present, viewing violence may prompt real -life violence. These researchers talk about violent viewing in terms of probabilistic causation rather than direct causation.
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