Does the media affect individuals and their gender?
Recently, I did a study on how the media affects individuals on their daily lives and, if it does, what was the overall impact on them. The media has a lot of built up stigmas, stereotypes, and expectations when it comes to gender, whether that may be non binary, transgender, male, or female people. These expectations sometimes become extremely detrimental to humans and then people may develop certain beliefs, because they’re not educated on things like this. My overall impression of the media goes a bit back and forth in terms of how gender is treated. There are some sources that are positive because of internet feminism, but there is also negativity because of ignorance, and because of the expectations placed onto individuals.
My friends and I discussed on this and I questioned them on what they thought. One of my questions was, “how do you think your gender is perceived in the media?”
My friend’s response was: “My gender is generally represented as leaders, powerful, and generally more intelligent (sidebar: this drives me fucking nuts)”. He went in depth how males are perceived as more intelligent in our world, which creates the issues of that men have the most power, but it also creates pressure to people who identify as male, to create this hyper masculine, powerful image of themselves. Another friend responded with: “ I have a lot of trouble being vulnerable because of what I see in the media. I see a lot of toughened up guys, and that’s what my brain has been trained to be. I want to be myself, and feel my emotions, and sometimes it’s a little hard to get there, but I do with the help of my good friends. I just think it’s crazy that men showing emotions and passion is an issue in the first place, even with women being more reserved are perceived as “not normal”, since women are supposed to be the “emotional ones”. There’s just so many stereotypes.”
On a more positive side of the spectrum, the media sometimes does spread awareness, and has become progressively more inclusive. A non binary friend of mine said “people like me aren’t always represented in the media, and that is bad, but I do see some people making the efforts to recognize people like us, and anyone else in the MOGII (Marginalized Orientations Gender Identities and Intersex) community”.
How women are perceived is not so positive as well. A lot of the research I did of women in media, was mostly them being sexualized, being told to seen and not heard, or they have to look and act a certain way. I asked a friend how that affects her, and she responded: “it makes me feel almost like a failure as a woman...like I’m not meeting all these expectations that the world seeks me to be. I know that a lot of my friends and family love me the way I am, but when I see women in lingerie and they’re all a size two, me being a plus sized woman makes me feel like, that can’t be me, ever. It’s unfair.” The ultimate “correct” image has been an issue for many years, and it’s constantly changing. The two “best” images in the media to have are, “a size two, flat stomach, tall, bikini body”, or “a larger bust, hourglass figure, and larger butt”. We all have different bodies, so being told that we must achieve these two certain looks becomes very upsetting, and that’s where people become extremely self deprecating on themselves.
Social media has also become an outlet to many who want to be able to express ignorance or hate. I asked a friend of mine what they thought about that, and they responded by saying: “I think that social media allows people to put themselves out there how they wish to be perceived and allows for us to see others gender expressions and identities and to learn more. But then again there will always be close-minded people who only know how to express themselves through hate.” In both circumstances it becomes a both positive and negative thing for how people behave in the media. When people behave negatively towards someone because of their gender identity it tends to become a massive issue, and continuously spreads out more and more. I asked my friend their opinion on this and their response was: “I think sometimes social media can be a huge mess for people and they can either be offended or be the ones offending others. Sometimes, we post things not realizing the drama it may stir up and it can have such a negative effect on a person's reputation. I've seen racist, sexist, crude posts and sometimes the people that were being targeted were even tagged in these posts.” Overall, issues become created in media because of judgements, and miscommunication. People aren’t educated, so therefore there is a bit of a roadblock in terms of how to get that information to that person. As a cis gender, queer woman, I feel different pressures from media, and notice all these ridiculous stereotypes of people like me in the media. Queer people are perceived as either very flamboyant, or I’m supposed to look more butch.
From all the information I’ve gathered, there’s a lot of different sides and opinions of how people feel their gender is represented in the media. There are both positives, but no matter what your gender is, media has somehow stemmed negative connotations no matter who you are. It is vital for our generation, and upcoming generations to help break these expectations and stereotypes built in our society. We need to create an inclusive system, where people’s opinions are still valid, all individuals are recognized, and their gender identities well. Most of all, we must all become educated to truly understand each other, otherwise, there will be no progress in our society and our media.
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