Stereotyping

Isn’t it interesting how many people would confidently say that the media had no influence on their life? The only way this would ever be possible is if you were contained in a room for your entire life.  Regardless of your belief of the direct hypodermic needle theory or the multistep flow theory, the media constantly integrates into everyone’s personal lives and influences its consumers thoughts and actions. I believe that the media instigated and reinforces stereotyping so much that it has encroached on its consumers lives and to an extent the media dictates everyone’s day-to-day lives.

            Throughout the past few decades, the images and behaviors in the media have become more and more extreme. Some examples of this are the increasingly larger sizes of men’s bodies and muscles and the decreasing size of women’s waistlines. The media reiterates these images enough to have an influence to persuade consumers to live and act as the flawless “idealistic” stereotypical roles.  Not only do these images contort peoples minds to think that this is the perfect way of life, the actions portrayed through films and television shows are thought out to be normal. As the films Tough Guise and Killing us Softly show, the influences caused by the media can be so extreme as to convincing that killing people is okay (from possible influences of violent videogames or films) or instilling that pre marital sex and teenage pregnancy are not issues worth concern. The media has created many stereotypes that infringe on society and eventually shape the roles of different genders, age groups, races, and other groups.

            Even as varied race representation in the media is very persistent and even exceeds their representation in society, the roles are still stereotyped. Examples of this can be seen in Maid in Manhattan, Gossip Girl, Spanglish, and The Secret Life of Bees, all of which have maids from a variety of races except for white. Marisa Ventura (Jennifer Lopez) portrays a Puerto Rican from the Bronx, Dorota Kishlovsky (Zuzanna Szadkowski) is Polish, Flor Moreno (Paz Vega) is Mexican, and Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson) is black.  In each of these examples have their own stereotype as well. The Puerto Rican is a poor single mother in need of money to raise her child.  The polish maid is extremely loyal and has partially raised the child of the family she works for. The Mexican solely speaks Spanish, is a single mother, and has a close network of family and friends that she highly values. Lastly, the black maid is the rock and caretaker of the child of the family she works for and shows a lot of attitude. The media create many stereotypes that are reflected into our society and shape our culture and our perspective of the way things “should” be.