“Gender differences are culturally formed. Though they exist on the basis of biological classification, they build a huge system of differentiation over and above it.” (Branston and Stafford, 2006: 147)
We are all aware of the different representations of men and women in the media. It isn’t something new, although it is something we take for granted and hardly ever question. That is before we become media students.
There are certain cultural images, associated with men and women and they go beyond the biological and set a certain framework not only for appearance, but also for behaviour, language, education, work, etc (or simply all areas of how a human being is perceived by others). Although arguably those stereotypes concerning male and female not only in the media, but also in real life are changing (because we’d like to believe we are so modern and open-minded, that all those stereotypes have now been challenged), we can see many gender oppositions represented in the media.
Perhaps on most occasions we don’t even assign the term “stereotype”, because for us this is something absolutely normal and acceptable – whether it’s hair, clothes, shoes, etc. But all these are cultural perceptions of men and women, created not entirely by the media, but media has certainly played a big part of shaping our understanding of gender related differences.
Here follows a brief table of culturally perceived differences between men and women. It is rather crude and probably on the simplest level of explanation, however these are certainly things we don’t even pay attention to, because they seem so normal for us.
1. Appearance
Male
Trousers and flat shoes.
Short hair (or not at all).
No make-up.
Tall and muscular.
No nail polish.
No earrings, bracelets, necklaces (although an occasional ring).
Hairy.
Female
Dresses, skirts and heels.
Long hair.
Make-up.
Shorter than men and not that muscular.
Nail polish.
Jewellery.
De-haired.
2. Behaviour
Male
Active; the leading party (i.e. approaching a woman at a bar).
Beer, fighting and swearing.
No emotions, toughness.
Arrogance.
No housework and don’t take care of the children.
Female
Passive, usually being approached, rather than expressing interest.
Cocktails, no fighting or swearing.
Plenty of emotions, tears.
Tenderness.
Housewives and stay-at-home mums.
3. Conversations and interests
Male
Conversations about sports, sex and cars.
Action movies.
Hardly any books.
No conversations about love or meeting “the one”.
Female
Conversations about hair, make-up and clothes.
Romantic comedies.
Books.
Conversations about love and believe in “the one”.
4. Education
Male
Well-educated, intelligent, with a sophisticated knowledge about the outside world.
Female
Rather less educated, mostly exhibiting lack of knowledge of the outside world.
5. Occupation
Male
Management jobs or jobs with very physical work involved.
Female
Secretaries, assistants, lower on the hierarchy in the workplace; no physical work.
Of course, as media images do change inevitably, these cultural perceptions are not stable and are subject to changes in time. Take, for instance, Hollywood cinema – in numerous occasions the main hero character is substituted with a woman, to break that stereotype of men being brave, tough and strong leaders. However, all these heroines are still thin and pretty, they wear make-up and, on a few occasions, dresses. Men have been portrayed as weak and emotional or stay-at-home dads, but they still wear trousers and not skirts. Moreover, make-up wearing men are still considered gay or too feminine (even Gothic fans), and most of the other “outsiders”, so to speak, that don’t follow the culturally established way, are considered, if not gay/too feminine or lesbian/too masculine, certainly weird.
Just think of Scottish kilts or male ballroom dancers – even if we don’t label them with feminine or gay, we certainly think they are weird. Independent women, strong women, women who don’t wear make-up or have short hair, working women or single mums (or both) are still considered cultural outsiders. And in some cases we believe certain behaviour or appearance is beyond acceptable – too feminine or too masculine is OK, but unshaven women is just not right.
These stereotypes have become so natural to us and they have been so embedded in our heads, that some of them we don’t want to challenge. Women, for instance, have been trying to get equality when it comes to work, let’s say, and they have been fighting discrimination at the working place, because we should all be equal (as suffragettes in the early 20th century fighting for women’s right to vote). But when it comes to the appearance’s aspect of masculinity and femininity, we don’t challenge the stereotypes of wearing dresses, high heels and make-up, because we want to keep the difference between what is considered feminine and masculine. Or in other words we don’t want to look the same as men do (or they to look as we do), because then we won’t be able to emphasize our femininity to attract the opposite sex. It is rather the behavioural and occupational inequality we want to fight, but appearance-wise we certainly wouldn’t like to leave the only difference between men and women to be their reproductive organs.Labels: tasks |
