Media representations of gender, sexuality, and disability

Question 1

What is a stereotype?

Answer 1

Stereotypes are one-sided accentuations of a characteristic or set of characteristics (real or imagined) that are supposedly indicative of a total group. Gender stereotypes commonly used in the media, for example, involve routinely assigning men and women different characteristics based on their biological sex. One important thing about media stereotypes is how they can be used as master statuses: the stereotypical characteristic is used to define everything about an individual or group.

Question 2

What is a trope?

Answer 2

Tropes, while similar to stereotypes, are commonly used, repeated themes or devices within which different groups are located. A common TV trope, for example, is that working-class women are invariably single parents who are victims of an abusive and largely-absent male partner. The elderly, on the other hand, almost invariably suffer from some form of dementia. Media tropes are, in this respect, cliched representations of social groups.

Question 3

Outline media representations of femininity.

Answer 3

Symbolic annihilation
Limited roles
Women in advertising
Women on screen

Question 4

Explain symbolic annihilation as a media representations of femininity.

Answer 4

Tuchman (1978) surveyed the substantive content of the mass media—television, newspapers, magazines—and the advertising they carry to gather support for her argument that, by largely ignoring women or portraying them in stereotypical roles of victim and/or consumer, the mass media ‘symbolically annihilate’ women.
Tuchman noted that most media portray women, if at all, in traditional roles: homemaker, mother, or, if they are in the paid workforce, clerical and other “pink-collar” jobs. Correspondingly, there are few, if any, depictions of strong female characters in positions of responsibility or authority, even inside the home.
Similarly, women’s magazines focused on the “domestic” pursuits—marriage, child rearing etc.—while not encouraging education, training, and other choices that tend to bring individuals into positions of power, authority, and independence.

A good example of the symbolic annihilation of women’s activities is the media coverage of women’s sports in newspapers and on television.

At the time of the 2012 Olympics, Packer et al. (2015) found considerably less newspaper coverage of women’s compared to men’s sport, and this declined further the year after.

What coverage did exist tended to sexualise, trivialise, and devalue women’s sporting accomplishments.

Question 5

Explain sexism in sports coverage media representations of femininity.

Answer 5

Feminists have noted the way in which coverage of women’s sports is often reported in a sexist manner. One famous incident involved a Wimbledon finalist whose appearance was scrutinised by BBC commentator prior to her match.

Women’s sport also receives much less coverage and attention than men’s sport.

Question 6

Explain limited roles as a media representations of femininity.

Answer 6

Women are generally represented in a narrow range of social roles by various types of media, whilst men are shown performing a full range of social and occupational roles. Tunstall (2000) argues that media representations emphasise women’s domestic, sexual, consumer and marital activities to the exclusion of all else. The media generally ignore the fact that a majority of British women go out to work. Men, on the other hand, are seldom presented nude or defined by their marital or family status.

Question 7

Explain gender and advertising as a media representation of femininity.

Answer 7

The golden age of 1950s advertising was made possible by both the visual novelty of magazine and television media and the post-war economy. Domestic femininity offered a reprieve from the sacrifice and asceticism practiced during the war.
Accordingly, the 1950s were marked by advertisements that sold a particular kind of domestic femininity to white, middle-class women who, as housewives, now controlled a significant portion of spending power in their families. This shift in product portrayal applied not only to fashion but also to products that were less straightforwardly gendered.

Question 8

Explain the feminine mystique.

Answer 8

Awash in pink, new inventions and household products promised to make women consumers into ideal wives and mothers, suggesting that women could buy their way into domesticity and, therefore, emphasised femininity-wash in pink, new inventions and household products promised to make women consumers into ideal wives and mothers, suggesting that women could buy their way into domesticity and, therefore, emphasised femininity.

Question 9

Explain gender and advertising TODAY.

Answer 9

Although changing role structures in the family and the labour force have brought significant variation in both male and female roles, it has been noted that there is a cultural lag in advertising, where men and women were, for a long period of time, depicted in more traditional roles.

Today, we are bombarded with advertisements selling the keys to femininity; some experts estimate that the average woman sees about 400 to 600 images a day. In contrast to the 1950s, when Britons tuned into or read a narrow set of television broadcasts and magazine spreads, we now have an overwhelming degree of choice in terms of what we consume.

The images used to sell products today no longer rely on narrow notions of white women as housewives, as they did in the 1950s, with greater diversity on display.

In addition to featuring more diverse bodies, advertisements today routinely disrupt the emphasis on domestic virtue. Yet many times, women are still placed into roles that advance men’s career aspirations—this time as secretaries and assistants rather than housewives (Massoni, 2004).

Further, today’s media images continue to portray the idealised woman as beautiful and sexually available, even as she is also career minded and ambitious.

Question 10

What is the beauty myth?

Answer 10

As Naomi Wolf (1991) argues in The Beauty Myth, beauty work encourages women to take on “an aspirational, individualist, can-do tone that says that you should be your best and nothing should get in your way”

Question 11

Explain using sexualised images of women to sell products.

Answer 11

The phrase ‘sex sells’ is an old adage to describe the way in which the objectification of (not exclusively, but particularly) women is used within advertising.
While researchers have found that the “sex sells” doctrine may well be false, its prevalence in media has long been criticized for promoting unattainable beauty ideals. Despite the women’s emancipation movement of the 70s, and even in the age of #MeToo, unrealistic and sexualised images of women remain painfully present in the advertising realm, representing what Mulvey (1975) calls the male gaze - female bodies viewed and judged through the lens of male desires.
Loubradou (2019) points out that the advertiser’s main goal is to persuade the consumer and attract attention. To do so, she continues, an ad must make our brain react. Sexual advertising “appears to have all of these ingredients” by titillating emotional areas of the brain, transgressing taboos and appealing to basic needs.
When female sexuality is used to sell consumer goods, an exaggerated form of (hetero) sexuality is employed that combines the physical - thin, large-breasted - and the emotional, such as patriarchal notions of ‘availability’.
While some of the most dramatic images belong to the fashion world, a range of products, from alcohol to perfume, have historically presented women as objects of lust and desire.
Today, the internet quickly disseminates images to viewers, making brands and advertisers fight even harder for attention. This race for views has led to taboo breaking, specifically in the world of fashion photography

e.g. American Apparel and Dolce & Gabbana

Question 12

Explain the common stereotypes that remain.

Answer 12

Despite recent changes, the Media Literacy Council (2018) noted a range of common gender stereotypes still persist in male and female media representations.

While women are much less likely to be not subjected to the crude forms of gender stereotyping that was common in the past, they remain overwhelmingly represented in ways that “prioritise the importance of beauty over brains”. While contemporary media representations may be more-subtle, they nevertheless fall into four main categories:

1. Body shape: praising women for being thin and fashionable while criticising (“body shaming”) those who, for whatever reason, do not conform to relatively narrow ideas about beauty and style.
2. Objectification: treating women and girls as sexual objects who mainly exist for the gratification of men.
3. Domesticity: suggesting that while some women can “have it all” (a contented family and work life), for most women their primary roles are caregivers and homemakers.
4. Emotional, where women are represented as overly dramatic, bitchy and prone to be over-emotional.

Question 13

Explain the Bechdel test.

Answer 13

The Bechdel Test was inspired by cartoonist Alison Bechdel‘s 1985 tongue-in-cheek comic strip ‘The Rule’ which became a basic measure to see if women are fairly represented in a film.
For a film to pass The Bechdel Test, the movie must simply have the following:

1: It must have at least two female characters
2: They must both have names
3: They must talk to each other about something other than a man

Question 14

Explain Disney’s representations of women.

Answer 14

Giroux and Pollock (2010) argued that women were represented in a narrow, restricted and distorted range of roles in Disney Films – where the typical female character is a sexualised yet delicate princess who needs to be rescued by a stronger male character.

Examples of where Disney reinforces female stereotypes include:

Snow White – who cleans the house of the male dwarves and is eventually rescued by a male prince because she is pretty.

Beauty and the Beast – In which Belle endures an abusive and violent beast in order to redeem him.

Ariel – who gives up her voice to win the prince with her body.

Mulan – who wins the war almost single handed only to return home to be romanced.

Disney princesses have inaccurate proportions: their eyes are usually larger than their waist.

Question 15

List the different tropes of how women are portrayed on screen.

Answer 15

Women in Refrigerators

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl

The Smurfette Principle

The Evil Demon Seductress

The Mystical Pregnancy

The Straw Feminist

Question 16

Explain the trope of Women in Refrigerators.

Answer 16

female characters are affected by injury, raped, killed, or overpowered, sometimes to stimulate “protective”traits, and often as aplot deviceintended to move a male character’s story arc forward, and seeks to analyse why these plot devices are used disproportionately on female characters.

Question 17

Explain the trope of the manic pixie dream girl.

Answer 17

exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures. MPDGs are said to help their men without pursuing their own happiness, and such characters never grow up; thus, their men never grow up.

Question 18

Explain the trope of the smurfette principle.

Answer 18

The Smurfette Principle is the tendency for works of fiction to have exactly one female amongst an ensemble of male characters, in spite of the fact that roughly half of the human race is female, unless a show is purposefully aimed at a female viewing audience, the main characters will tend to be disproportionately male.

Question 19

Explain the trope of the evil demon seductress.

Answer 19

The Evil Demon Seductress is a supernatural creature usually a demon, alien, robot, vampire etc. who is most often disguised as a sexy human female. She uses her sexuality and sexual wiles to manipulate, seduce, kill and often eat poor, hapless men by luring them into her evil web.

Question 20

Explain the trope of the mystical pregnancy.

Answer 20

duringpregnancysomethingmysticalhappens to the mother and/or the fetus. Unfortunate women subjected to experimentation

Question 21

Explain the trope of the straw feminist.

Answer 21

A character whose “feminism” is drawn only for the purposes of eitherproving them wrongorproviding comedy.

Question 22

Does the modern media empower women?

Answer 22

The media has also become more fragmented across old and new forms and Gauntlett (2002) argued that there are increasingly positive aspects to media representations of gender.

Gauntlett suggested that the media is “within limits, a force for change”: traditional stereotypical representations of women, for example, have been replaced by “feisty, successful ‘girl power’ icons“.

He claimed that surveys of young women and their lifestyles suggest that these media messages were having a positive and significant impact on the way young women construct their identities.

However, research also indicates that women who use new media may experience the sorts of everyday sexist representations encountered in older media.

Indeed, almost any article on an internet news site that positively focuses on women’s issues or rights will attract a huge number of sexist comments.

The internet may help to disseminate feminist ideas more widely, but it also does the same for its polar opposite

Question 23

Explain media representations of masculinity.

Answer 23

While, as with their female counterpart, male representations have always featured in different media (print, film, television and, more-recently, the Internet) these representations have tended to be more-subtle and nuanced than those of women. Comparing the two:

Body shape: men have traditionally been allowed a much wider range of body shapes, although recent forms of representation have started to emphasise idealised - and unobtainable save for a dedicated few - male forms.

Domesticity: where women are most-often represented in the home, men are afforded much more freedom in terms of a life - particularly work and leisure - outside the home. Working men also tend to be represented in terms of their power, status and ability.

Emotional: media representations of men tend to emphasise “masculine” qualities of mental and physical toughness, grit and so forth as admirable emotions. Any display of “feminine” emotions is generally seen as weakness in men - although there are exceptions that prove the rule. A further aspect of emotional representation is a tendency for the media to value “bad boys” - those who, for example, engage in various forms of risky behaviour (even where individual risk-taking may endanger others).

Question 24

What are some of the classic media icons of masculinity?

Answer 24

Scholars at the Sixth Annual Children and the Media Conference, for example, summarized five classic media icons of masculinity: “The Joker,” “The Jock,” “The Strong Silent Type,” “The Big Shot,” and “The Action Hero” (Children Now, 1999).

Question 25

What are some of the masculine qualities emphasised in the media?

Answer 25

Jeffords (1994) noted seven masculine qualities, namely, being competitive, athletic, decisive, unemotional, strong/aggressive, powerful, and never feminine. Other masculine traits included comradeship, loyalty, bravery, endurance of pain and suffering (Newsinger, 1993), the ability to inflict and endure violence, survival skills, adventure, exploration, courage, and ingenuity (Ryall, 1993).

Question 26

What is meant by hegemonic masculinity?

Answer 26

Connell (1985) initially coined the term “hegemonic masculinity,” explaining it as a culturally naturalised (and valued) form of masculinity. This form consisted of stereotyped traits and characteristics of being a “real man” that focused on power, and served to privilege and legitimate patriarchy.

Question 27

What are other forms of masculinity portrayed in the media other than hegemonic masculinity?

Answer 27

Connell (1985) initially coined the term “hegemonic masculinity,” explaining it as a culturally naturalized (and valued) form of masculinity. This form consisted of stereotyped traits and characteristics of being a “real man” that focused on power, and served to privilege and legitimate patriarchy.

Question 28

Explain hypermasculinity.

Answer 28

Scholars theorized hypermasculinity as a form of extreme masculinity void of any feminization. It was defined as characterizing men who were “tough, aggressive, ultra-competitive, strong and dominating” Furthermore, hypermasculine men were powerful, hypersexual, and feared.

The 1999 film Fight Club portrays masculine rejuvenation through violence: White men are depicted as “slaves with white collars” who have been emasculated through “the Ikea nesting instinct”. The solution in the film is for men to learn to be men again by starting a “fight club,” which glorifies violence for the sake of violence. The film ends in a dramatic display of violence against the consumerism depicted as a castrating force in men’s lives: the protagonist blows up a credit card company.

Question 29

Explain metrosexuality.

Answer 29

Gauntlett (2008) suggests that men’s media such as Men’s Health transmit metrosexual values because they portray men as “fundamentally caring, generous, and good-humoured.”
Gauntlett argues that these magazines are often centred on helping men to be good partners, healthy, fashionable, and funny.
Described as “a gift to advertisers, the metrosexual image-conscious man spends considerable resources on appearance and lifestyle” (Pompper, 2010).
There are signs then that media representations of masculinity are moving away from the emphasis on traditional masculinity, to embrace new forms of masculinity that celebrate fatherhood and emotional vulnerability.
Having said that, it is important not to overemphasise these changes, as the overall tone still strongly supports hegemonic masculinity.

Question 30

Explain the liberal feminist perspective of the representation of women in the media.

Answer 30

Feminist sociologists have been very critical of the representations of men and women in the media as they believe that they play an important role in the construction of gender roles.
Liberal feminists believe that media representations have been slow to change in response to women’s achievements in society, and that this ‘cultural lag’ is due to the fact that women rarely achieve high positions on media organisations- e.g. there have been very few female editors of Britain’s national newspapers.
Mills (2014) argues that the newsroom (particularly in reference to tabloids) is a very male culture that can be off-putting to women.

The Writers Guild of Great Britain argue that the lack of female writers in British film and TV is producing a “self-sustaining loop” that perpetuates the gender imbalance, after a 2018 study revealed women write 28% of TV episodes and make up 16% of film screenwriters.

Question 31

Explain the Marxist/radical feminist perspective of the representation of women in the media.

Answer 31

Marxist feminists believe that the roots of stereotypical images of both men and women in the media are economic.

Marxist feminists have often focused on the content of women’s magazines, which make their profits from advertising and, thus, generate ‘false needs’ around beauty, body shape etc. in order to attract advertising revenue from the cosmetics, diet, and fashion industries.

By presenting an ideal that it difficult to achieve, capitalist groups are assured growth and profits.

(Radical?) feminists such as Naomi Wolf believe that the media deliberately dupe women into believing in the beauty myth, and this serves to ‘keep women down’.

Question 32

Explain the postmodernist and pluralist perspectives on the representation of women in the media.

Answer 32

Postmodernists such as Gauntlett argue that, in contrast with the past, men and women no longer receive singular and straightforward messages from the media that suggest only one kind of ideal masculinity or femininity.

Gauntlett argues that the mass media actually challenge traditional definitions of gender and are in fact a force for change because they encourage a diversity of masculine and feminine identities.

Pluralists similarly claim that the mass media simply reflect social attitudes and tastes- in other words, public demand. They argue that if women were really unhappy at the way they were being represented, they would not buy media products such as women’s magazines. However, this approach fails to consider that sections of the media may be responsible for creating these needs in the first place.

Question 33

Explain media representations of sexuality.

Answer 33

Batchelor et al. (2004) carried out content analysis of media consumed by young people and discovered that some aspects of sexuality- sexual health and consent- were represented very positively.

However, the findings also suggest three important limitations of media coverage of young people’s sexuality:

Contraception was clearly represented as a female responsibility.

There were very gendered differences in representations of how men and women discussed sex, with men represented as the pursuers and women as the pursued.

There was a lack of positive images of gay and lesbian young people, and a failure to represent sexual diversity.

Question 34

Explain representations of LGBT people in the media.

Answer 34

Media representations of sexuality are overwhelmingly heterosexual in nature.

Batchelor et al. found that being gay was not generally integrated into mainstream media representations, but, rather, where it did appear it was mainly as a source of anxiety or bullying- and, in mainstream young people’s media, lesbianism was almost invisible.

Dyer (2002) argues that the media construct stereotypical signs of gayness to make visible the invisible.

Question 35

What are some of the main findings of the stonewall report about representations of LGBT individuals in the media?

Answer 35

They found that LGBT people were disproportionately consigned to the status of comedic relief – their characters presented as something to laugh at or deride. This was especially found to be the case with representations of lesbianism, frequently presented as over-sexualised and exotic, for male’s viewing pleasure.
Out of a total of 126 hours of television programmes analysed:
5 hours and 43 minutes focused on LGBT related issues or characters
46 minutes portrayed them realistically or positively.
Stonewall noted that the majority of the coverage represented gays in particular as:
Unhappy and distressed about their sexual orientation
As people who had been bullied and rejected by their families
There was very little reference to lesbians or transsexuals.

(-) This research may be somewhat outdated.

Question 36

Explain trans representation in the media.

Answer 36

Media representations of transgender characters on American television have increased in the last 15 years, with shows such as Grey’s Anatomy, Ugly Betty, Glee, and Orange is the New Black positively featuring transgender characters and actors.

However, some argue that there is a moral panic around trans identities being generated in the media, particularly around proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act in the UK.

Question 37

Explain the LGBT community and the new media.

Answer 37

The representations of LGBT people n new media are more positive because much of the content of the internet is user generated.

Consequently, LGBT organisations and individuals have constructed thousands of sites that offer advice and support to LGBT people. Moreover, social media such as Twitter and Facebook have been used to generate support for e.g. gay marriage.

For LGBTQ youth in particular, the Internet can allow people to find community and representation.

Question 38

Explain the two model of disability.

Answer 38

There are two broad models for understanding disability.

The medical model of disability says people are disabled by their impairments or differences. This model looks at what is ‘wrong’ with the person, not what the person needs.

The social model of disability- favoured by many disability scholars, e.g. Tom Shakespeare- says that people are disabled by barriers in society, not by their impairment or difference. Barriers can be physical, like buildings not having accessible toilets, or they can be caused by people’s attitudes to difference- i.e. prejudices- like assuming disabled people can’t do certain things.

Question 39

Explain media stereotypes of disabled people.

Answer 39

Barnes (1992) identified a number of recurring stereotypes of disabled people, which he claimed regularly appear in media representations of the disabled:

Pitiable and pathetic – a staple of television documentaries, which often focus on disabled children and the possibilities of miracle cures.

Sinister and evil – for example Villains in James Bond movies often have physical impairments

Atmospheric or Curio – where disabled people are included in drama to enhance atmosphere of menace, unease, mystery or deprivation.

Super-cripples – the disabled are sometimes portrayed as having special powers, for example blind people might be viewed as visionaires with sixth sense.

Sexually abnormal – the media usually treat the disable as having no sense of sexuality, but when they do there are represented as sexually degenerate.

Incapable of participating fully in community life – disable people are rarely show as integral and productive members of working society – Barns calls this the stereotype of omission.

Question 40

Explain representations of disability in telethons.

Answer 40

Roper (2003) suggests that mass media representations of disability on telethons can create problems for people with disabilities and suggests that telethons over-rely on ‘cute’ children who are not that representative of the range of people with disabilities in Britain. Roper argues that telethons are primarily aimed at encouraging the general public to alleviate their guilt and their relief that they are not disabled, by giving money rather than informing the general public of the facts about disability.

Karpf (1988) suggests that there is a need for charities, but that telethons act to keep the audience in the position of givers and to keep recipients in their place as grateful and dependent. Karpf notes that telethons are about entertaining the public, rather than helping us to understand the everyday realities of what it is like to have a disability. Consequently, these media representations merely confirm social prejudices about people with disabilities, e.g. that they are dependent on the help of able-bodied people.

Question 41

Explain disabled people being under and misrepresented in the media.

Answer 41

A report entitled ‘Mock the Weak’ published in 2014 found that disabled people were both under and misrepresented in the media, noting the following:

Disabled people are often defined or portrayed as free-loaders, scroungers, skivers, ‘poor wee souls’, miracles or ‘super human’ …and some Government ideology/policy/rhetoric drives this.

There are poor links between disabled people, their organisations and the media.

Disabled people don’t come forward to be in the media very often – they are frightened that if they do, they may lose what support they have, they might be seen as ‘too capable for support/benefits’ or they fear they might get bullied, harassed or experience hate crime.

Where they are approached, disabled people are usually invited to comment/appear as ‘users’, they are rarely considered or approached as ‘experts’.