Gender Stereotypes In The Media Analysis

Women beings objects of sexual desire for men in relationships have been a recurring theme in the media for years. I believe there are certain stereotypical qualities men portray in the media, such as dominance, aggressiveness and sexuality that can be associated with the abuse of women. There are also qualities that women portray such as beauty, passiveness and sexuality in order to meet cultural expectations of femininity that contribute to their victimization. Examples of these stereotypical behaviors can be observed in advertisements, film, music videos, TV shows, magazines and more. In the “Rape Culture” article, the author states that “these behaviors become even more problematic when we reinforce the notion that no doesn’t actually mean no”, and he goes on to discusses the
importance of realizing how warped our societies notions of traditional male-female romance has become (Maxwell, 2014).
Certain gender stereotypes are reinforced through pop culture that lead our society to believe deviant behaviors are acceptable. One example that came to mind was Rihanna’s music video for her song “We Found Love”. Rihanna and the male in the music video are in an extremely toxic relationship- they are clearly addicted to drugs and the lyrics “we found love in a hopeless place” lead us to believe they are addicted to each other as well. I can specifically remember watching the music video a few years ago and thinking that it was promoting objectivity and the possession of women. Rihanna speaks at the beginning of the video and says “It's like you're screaming, and no one can hear, you almost feel ashamed, that someone
could be that important, that without them, you feel like nothing”. Through out the rest of the video Rihanna is wearing little clothing to clearly target and provoke the interest of the male. The two are shown doing drugs followed by sexual encounters and getting in physical and verbal fights through out the video. The content in “We Found Love” is a reflection of the cultural values we adhere to in the United States and other countries that share similar pop culture. These values strongly advocate male domination over women and desensitize the sexual violence that is present. The video has over 500,000,000 views on YouTube and we can assume most of those views are coming from adolescents, as the Rihanna songs are generally very mainstream and popular for a younger audience. What a horrible example to be setting for young men and women. I think it extremely troubling that rape culture shows rape as a common occurrence and that it is normalized by the “We Found Love” video along with many other popular medias in our society today.