Gender Stereotypes in the Media

The media stereotypes women, sexualizes them, and uses gender-targeted advertising to sell products. Firstly, the media portrays women as weak, helpless and implying they need a man to make the right decision. For example, in the movie Scream all the female characters seem dumb or helpless. During the entire movie all of the male characters are able to get away from the killer and are shown doing so in a smart or defensive way. The women are shown to be too “weak” or “dumb” to do anything to save themselves. They are shown running around aimlessly and hiding in very obvious places. I want to scream at the TV, “What are you doing? Run the other way!” Additionally, the media sexualizes women in other ways. Picture a naked woman with all the “necessary” parts covered, draped across a shirtless male. How is that selling perfume? Secondly, are Carl’s Junior commercials. For their new burger ad, they have women running around on the beach in skimpy bikinis and as it ends, a woman is taking a bite of the burger, while having the sauce run down her cleavage. In my opinion, the women running on the beach have nothing to do with the actual product. The reason they did this is because it would get the burger to sell, mostly to men. The media does this because sex sells. Finally, the media uses gender-targeted advertising to sell their products. For example, Coke Zero was advertised as a men’s only drink. The commercials made Coke Zero out to be the “manly” Diet Coke. In actuality they are the exact same product, but one is just marketed towards men. Another product that is being gender-targeted is Kinder eggs. Kinder eggs are chocolate eggs that have a small toy inside. Kinder eggs packaging used to be white and would contain a random toy inside the chocolate. The Kinder egg company has recently come out with blue and pink packaging. Not only is Kinder assigning a gender to chocolate, they are also making the toys inside “appropriate” for each gender. The pink eggs...