Roles in His/Her Media Content
Women have a difficult time even appearing onscreen and when they do they are subject to dichotomous expectations. Women onscreen must be beautiful and submissive, desirable and servile, feminine and not too smart.
The media thrives on reinforcing the myth that differences in content preference are a result of natural gender differentiation. When content is aimed toward the middle ground and marketed as something with genderless mass-appeal, it still often heavily favors the male gaze. Stereotypical representations of women can be found in content aimed at men, women, or all.
In content aimed for male or neutral audiences, two roles for women stand out as most acceptable: nurturing figure or hypersexualized adornment. The women portrayed are still largely either exciting romantic interests or comfortable familial figures. Women depicted as active and complex must also be incredibly attractive in this type of content. Female characters being active and dominating, so-called "masculine" attributes, must be balanced out by overly-emphasizing the physical differences. If a woman has agency, it is often coupled with objectifying shots, revealing clothing, or the inclusion of nudity.
Content that features a woman as the protagonist is largely assumed to be "for" women. Women in this case often lack agency and have romantic ambitions instead of motivations for personal achievement. Too often these characters need to be guided by someone else or do not actively participate in destinies. Even the types of humor in content aimed toward women has been gendered. What seems to be considered "women's humor" is more restrained, more polite, and innuendo riddled. "Men's humor" can venture into more direct, outlandish, and raunchy material. While humor is not something inherently gendered, this divide is perpetuated along with other misinformed ideas regarding preference through content targeted toward audiences by gender.
The media thrives on reinforcing the myth that differences in content preference are a result of natural gender differentiation. When content is aimed toward the middle ground and marketed as something with genderless mass-appeal, it still often heavily favors the male gaze. Stereotypical representations of women can be found in content aimed at men, women, or all.
In content aimed for male or neutral audiences, two roles for women stand out as most acceptable: nurturing figure or hypersexualized adornment. The women portrayed are still largely either exciting romantic interests or comfortable familial figures. Women depicted as active and complex must also be incredibly attractive in this type of content. Female characters being active and dominating, so-called "masculine" attributes, must be balanced out by overly-emphasizing the physical differences. If a woman has agency, it is often coupled with objectifying shots, revealing clothing, or the inclusion of nudity.
Content that features a woman as the protagonist is largely assumed to be "for" women. Women in this case often lack agency and have romantic ambitions instead of motivations for personal achievement. Too often these characters need to be guided by someone else or do not actively participate in destinies. Even the types of humor in content aimed toward women has been gendered. What seems to be considered "women's humor" is more restrained, more polite, and innuendo riddled. "Men's humor" can venture into more direct, outlandish, and raunchy material. While humor is not something inherently gendered, this divide is perpetuated along with other misinformed ideas regarding preference through content targeted toward audiences by gender.
One of the most common ways in which women are consistently misrepresented is appearance. Female characters are excessively valued for their looks while being expected to adhere to an unrealistic, limited ideal of beauty.
The above promotional posters for the 2013 film, The Counselor, feature four of the main characters: two men and two women. Without close examination, noticeable differences are apparent in the staging and editing of the images according to gender. The men are allowed to be wrinkled while the women are airbrushed to not even have visible pores. The men are disheveled looking with tousled hair and realistic variations in skin tone. The women are put together with their jewelry, heavy makeup, and coiffed hair all in place. This is only the marketing for the film, but the gender differences visible here are even more blatant within the film. While Hollywood has long had high standards for appearance, the gender differentiation of age is another way to limit the types of women visible onscreen. Javier Bardem, 45, and Michael Fassbender, 37, are comparable in age to Cameron Diaz, 41, and Penelope Cruz, 39, but their images are treated very differently according to gender standards. While the men retain their signs of age as a display of power and purpose, the women are made to look youthful. This illustrates that even today men can keep marks of maturity and remain desirable by Hollywood standards, but women not have to be incredible attractive, they also cannot show visible signs of age. |
gender through the years: changes in gender representation
Unfortunately, there has not been much progress in representing women onscreen over the years. While the types of acceptable roles for women have changed somewhat, the numbers of women onscreen and the focus of the content remain imbalanced. Even today, women are still underrepresented and stereotyped as characters.
Research shows that women have been consistently outnumbered by men onscreen for 60 years. A study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that not only do men eclipse women onscreen by a greater than 2 to 1 ratio, women are twice as likely to be shown in sexual scenes as their male counterparts.
Hypersexualization as a form of gender differentiation continues to be prominent in film today. Roughly a third of the female speaking characters in the top 500 films from 2007-2012 were shown in sexually revealing clothing or partially naked. While only 7% of male characters wore sexually revealing attire, 28.8% of the female characters did.
The emphasis on gender differentiation continues and without intervention will continue to be instilled in the next generation.
Research shows that women have been consistently outnumbered by men onscreen for 60 years. A study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that not only do men eclipse women onscreen by a greater than 2 to 1 ratio, women are twice as likely to be shown in sexual scenes as their male counterparts.
Hypersexualization as a form of gender differentiation continues to be prominent in film today. Roughly a third of the female speaking characters in the top 500 films from 2007-2012 were shown in sexually revealing clothing or partially naked. While only 7% of male characters wore sexually revealing attire, 28.8% of the female characters did.
The emphasis on gender differentiation continues and without intervention will continue to be instilled in the next generation.
NOTE: The above charts were created here by Imgur using data from bechdeltest.com and imdb.com