Gender Stereotypes: Gender Roles And Advertising

I do believe that gender roles and advertising do have some influence in the occurrence of violence, because based on advertisements and the media, there are certain roles men and women are to portray. For example, women are the caregivers, have to maintain a clean home, and are inferior to men. Men are to have strong and positive characteristic to be viewed, and considered as a “man.” As in the video, Killing Us Softly 4, Jean Kilbourne states, “turning a human being into a thing is almost the first step towards justifying violence against that person” (ChallengingMedia, 2012). Based on that statement, the media and advertisements expose women as objects by sending a message to some of their viewers that women are useless, worthless and mistreated
as human beings. As for men, advertisements, the media, and men set high standards on how men is to walk, talk, and present themselves. If men were not viewed as “strong, intimidating, powerful, and so on,” but more of a “wuss, wimp, fag, and etc,” as in the Tough Guise video, violence arises among men for not exposing their masculinity they were born as (). It is advertisements that work in a way to persuade the mindset of individuals on how and what men and women are to be viewed as in society. When men and women do not follow their gender roles, it creates problems between both genders, by putting a fear to both emphasizing who is to do what, and how to act.