Fairy Tales And Gender Stereotypes Essay

Stereotype. Stereotypical. Stereotyping. All are words I’m sure we all have heard. A question I have asked myself is “Why do stereotypes exist and more importantly, why do they matter?” A stereotype is an oversimplified image of a person, place, or object. George Takei, a Japanese actor, once said “If we allow ourselves to judge another based on a stereotype, we have allowed a generalization to replace our own thinking.” So why do we allow ourselves, as people, to judge one another based on a stereotype? The answer is we shouldn’t. Stereotypes are everywhere, including school. In a poll taken by 20 DHS students, 55.5% of the students answered that most stereotypes are about certain groups of people such as athletes, cheerleaders, etc. One example would be “Athletes don’t care about grades” or “Popular girls are always mean.” However in reality, maybe athletes do care about their grades, but just don’t have enough time to do all their homework. Maybe popular girls are actually nice, but seem mean due to rumors other people have made up. We don’t ever think about what happens “behind the scenes” owing to the fact that society has already given us an image of what happens. Even Samara Green, the author of “Fairy Tales and Gender Stereotypes”, said “Maybe it’s because of the books and movies we grow up learning from and the characters we idolize.” There are numerous movies out there that show the dumb jock and mean girl stereotype such as “Mean Girls” and “Clueless.”
One way we can prevent stereotypes from being used is to not use them ourselves and encourage others to do the same. In the article “Stop the Stereotypes” the author, Shalita Grant, states, “ Stop supporting films and plays that perpetuate stereotypes. Stop a friend who makes any remark about someone’s character based on race.” Being part of the