The media has given us false ideas of masculinity and femininity. What are your views?
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Transcript of The media has given us false ideas of masculinity and femininity. What are your views?
Low Jo An 7G5
The media has given us false ideas of masculinity and femininity. What are your views?
Television, newspapers, books and songs. These are the things that
you and I interact with daily, and no doubt that they influence our
mindsets. What about the portrayals of masculinity and femininity?
Yes, apparently it does appear in these forms of media too and our
minds are highly influenced by what appears to be false on this topic
without us realizing it.
The guy need not always be the hero and the girl need not be an
attractive drama queen. All the time, be it in television drama serials,
movies, books or other forms of media, the male character is always of
utmost importance. Either that or he is the hero that never seen a
broom before who gets to save her, the damsel in distress who’s life
goal is to shop, look good, do the chores and bear and take care of
children. Nowadays, there are househusbands and working women in
our society. Currently in Japan, 30% of the married men would not
mind being househusbands. This shows that the current society is
already breaking away from this false impression of what life should be
in a society of men and women.
Unfortunately, children are exposed to this untrue claim at a tender
age without them even knowing it through fairytales. Famous fairytales
such as Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Cinderella and Rapunzel are
read by almost all the children and are also used to teach children to
distinguish between right and wrong. Naturally, these fairytales put a
deep impression on the minds of these children and unsuspectingly
they affect the way they think and go about doing things in the future.
Girls who think highly of the female characters aspire to be somewhat
like them and therefore want to be nurses, mothers and housewives
and the boys would receive more importance between the two genders
and will want to take care of the women at home in future. In a recent
survey done on 3000 British parents, a quarter of them reject classic
fairytales such as Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella more or
less due to the above-mentioned reasons.
These untrue ideas that lead to stereotypes, gender inequality and in
some cases, gender discrimination should be stopped but, again, there
are still celebrities, books and movies being produced promoting these
untrue qualities in men and women. Presently, although majority of
society still unknowingly fall into traps of the media, part of society is
simultaneously accepting the fact that what the media says or portrays
is not always correct and this has also led to an incline in working
mums and stay-home dads. Men have also become vainer, some even
vainer then women themselves, who, by nature, are supposed to want
to look good.
These untrue ideas of women being powerless, weak and physically
and emotionally controlled by men have ceased. In the economic
circle, women and men hold the same amount or importance and
power. Men have become more sensitive and give women the due
respect, and gender inequality as well as false ideas and qualities of
men and women are beginning to shed in our modern day society. The
media should not give us false ideas of what men and women should
be like they are doing now.
Word count: 541 words
Bibliography
Editorial “Househusbands on the rise” The Japan Times Pte Ltd 18 January 2009 <http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ed20090118a2.html>
Davis, Beverly “Fairytales as Children Stories” Beverley’s Treehouse 13 September 2006 <http://infohost.nmt.edu/~beverly/writings/fairytales.html>
Hakea, Ayman, Hassan el. “Fairy Tales, in a World of Virtual Reality.” EarthYouth.net.<http://earthyouth.takinitglobal.org/express/article.html>
Rowe, Karen E. “Feminism and Fairy Tales.” 15 May 2003 <http://www.broadviewpress.com/tales/printable/feminism.htm>
Young, Johnathan. “Once Upon a Time: How Fairy Tales Shape Our Lives.” Inside Journal. 12 May 2003 <http://folkstory.com/articles/onceupon.html>
Patson, Graeme “Traditional fairytales 'not PC enough for parents” Telegraph 05 January 2009 <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/4125664/Traditional-fairytales-not-PC-enough-for-parents.html>