Teen Stereotypes
Stereotypes are found for every social aspect of our society. There are stereotypes about ethnicity, age groups, gender, sexual orientation, people with mental disorders and anything else to do with different groupings in society. However are all stereotypes negative? Men have traditionally been seen as the “stronger” sex. When they excel at things like business or jobs where you have to be stern and have a strong resolve they are depicted as being strong leaders. However when a woman does the same, like Hilary Clinton, they are seen as too stern and not “feminine” enough. Donatella Versace even said that Hilary Clinton should wear skirts more often to appear more feminine. In my personal opinion there are more negative stereotypes than positive
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stereotypes and even positive stereotypes can have an adverse effect; for example: all Asian people are good at math. That would seem to be a positive stereotype because it’s “praising” an ethnic group. However, when a member of an Asian ethnic group does not excel at math, people say things like “but you’re Asian! How could you be bad at math?!”. A supposedly positive stereotype could have an adverse effect because they still group all people into a category that not everyone fits into. Another example would be all Black people are good at basketball. A friend of my mother’s son tried playing basketball and he continued playing it even though he wanted to play soccer. I asked him why he didn’t switch sports and he said “because I’m Black and soccer is for White kids”. How do children internalize these ideas? Fredrick Williams, Robert LaRose and Frederica Frost suggest that children get these ideas from television (1981). During the lecture on the media and internalizing ideas we discovered that we are affected by television far more than we think we are. So do stereotypes stem only from the media? Do stereotypes have a detrimental, neutral or beneficial effect on society?
Ethnic stereotypes can come from religion and the media. They can be passed down through generations in families, they can be learned from people at school, and they can develop as a person gets older. Ethnic stereotypes can also be reflexive. A culture could have stereotypes about themselves. Eriksen provides a table containing stereotypes held by different cultures living in the Mauritius society (2002). The table is divided into stereotypes the people apply to themselves and stereotypes the people give to other cultures. The Creole people saw themselves as “funloving, compassionate and friendly” while the other cultures saw Creole people as “lazy, merry and careless” (Eriksen, 2002, pg.24). The Muslim people were seen as “religious fanatics” and “non-minglers”, but they saw themselves as “members of a proud, expanding culture”(Erikesen, 2002, pg.24). Stereotypes given to a culture by its own members can reinforce pride and a sense of unity. In that case, stereotypes are beneficial to the preservation of a culture and they enforce nationalism and in some cases patriotism. Eriksen argues that not all ethnic stereotypes are negative and that they can be quite beneficial; he says stereotypes help people to “create order in a complicated social universe” (Eriksen, 2002, pg.25). He states that stereotypes “give the individual the impression that they understand society” (Eriksen, 2002, pg.25). However Eriksen also says that stereotypes can have the “self-fulfilling prophecy” effect (Eriksen, 2002, pg.25). In some cultures where a certain race is looked down upon, a member of that ethnic group can be made to feel inferior or they can be denied certain privileges based solely on their ethnic background (Eriksen, 2002, pg.25). A good example of this would be the status of African-American’s during the early 20th century. When the Jim Crow laws were in place segregation was found everywhere. An African-American person couldn’t find a high-paying job, could not go to post secondary and they couldn’t even share the same washroom or drinking fountain with the Caucasian-Americans. A lot of them adopted the attitude of “that’s just how life goes” because of the pressure of society to make it seem like there were no other options.
Many ethnic stereotypes are perpetuated by the media, and those images are almost always negative or detrimental. Asian people are martial arts masters, or they are made to speak with heavy accents for comedic purposes. Black people are usually thieves, gang members, or made to sound uneducated. Hispanic people are almost never in a position where they are business people are people in higher occupations and are nearly always speaking with a heavy Mexican accent. Jewish people are associated with stinginess. Italian American people are seen as mafia members. First Nations people are seen as alcoholics and belong in the “other” category; I was reading the daily 24 hours free newspaper and the caption of the cover picture was “Many people showed up to object including aboriginal protesters”. When I read this the first time it seemed normal but I thought about it and the fact that they were First Nations is completely irrelevant. If it had said “Many people showed up to object including Caucasian protesters” people would definitely think twice. Irish people are seen as rowdy drunks and little is known about true Irish culture. St. Patrick’s Day was originally the day to honor the day the patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick, died. Now people think of it as a drinking holiday and it has lost its holy and sacred meaning. Although a lot of people are aware that these are stereotypes we still internalize them and judge members of an ethnicity from information we get in the media and our own personal prejudices. Irving Lewis Allen states that ethnic stereotypes are even becoming part of everyday language, for example saying you were “jewed or gypped” out of something means you were cheated or ripped off. These stereotypes are definitely negative; in the study of ethnic stereotypes there are almost no positives. Some people may be able to play up their ethnicity to gain benefits in society but even that enforces that boundary of “us and them”.
Gender stereotypes are very prevalent in our society. There are men’s roles, and then there are women’s roles. There are men’s jobs, and then there are women’s jobs. Men can be strong, aggressive and assertive. Women can be soft, submissive and subservient, and are in fact supposed to be. Men can have multiple partners and that is considered more acceptable than a woman who does the same. There are still such strong sexual stereotypes to do with a man and a woman that can invoke fear in many situations such as a woman being home alone and a man comes to the door asking for help. The fact that she is a woman may affect her choice to open the door, since men are shown to always be overpowering women. Some gender stereotypes however can be somewhat beneficial. Like I mentioned before, men are seen as the stronger and more able sex, therefore they can be seen as dominant. Women who possess the same qualities are seen as cold hearted and too masculine. This stereotype has existed for many years and is found worldwide. Carolyn Kitch states that this idea was made “popular in the first” thirty years of the century (Kitch, 2001, pg.3). Women are always being sexualized in the media. Women are shown as being seductive and readily available. The media is most likely responsible for this stereotype. For a long time people were blaming the victim in rape cases. What a woman wore and what her occupation was changed her credibility. If she was wearing a short skirt she was asking for it, because the media portrays women who wear such clothing as sexually promiscuous. Sheridan Prasso talks about how this sexualized stereotype is especially strong in Asian cultures; Prasso states that Asian women in Asian countries are trained to cater to tourists and visitors and in turn these people go back to their home countries with the expectation that all Asian women will be this way (Prasso, 2005, p. 5). Is this a detrimental or beneficial stereotype? The “Asian mystique” is not necessarily entirely bad but it enforces the idea of male dominance in a society and again groups all Asian women into this one category.
Christine Williams touches upon the subject of “men’s work” and “women’s work” and she gives examples of how this is perpetuated in the media. She talks about the movie Kindergarten Cop, where Arnold Schwarzenegger goes undercover as a kindergarten teacher (Williams, 1995). He can’t deal with little five year old children, enforcing the idea that a “real man” is incapable of doing a “woman’s work” (Williams, 1995, pg.3). There has recently been a rise of men in “women’s” jobs. There are more men becoming elementary school teachers, social workers, librarians and nurses (Williams, 1995, pg.3). However some jobs seem as though they will always be gender classified such as hairdressing or housekeeping. Unless the man is a barber there is a stereotypical notion that the man is gay or very feminine.
Then there is the subject of gay men and how they are always portrayed as being extremely feminine. There are movies, such as Brokeback Mountain which attempt to dissolve such stereotypes but the generalization remains. There is also the reverse stereotype that lesbians are masculine. Some people have the stereotype that being homosexual is a disease, or they think that all homosexual people will be attracted to everyone of the same sex. In high school there was a talk at my school about sexual orientation and tolerance and this is one of the issues that came up. They asked everyone if they were attracted to all members of the opposite sex and of course we all said no. Then they asked why we thought (or some of us thought) that all homosexual people would be attracted to all members of the same sex. The issue of acceptance is being blocked by negative stereotypes and taboos in our society. Where do these stereotypes stem from? In the lecture we discussed how most of the people who control the media are white, middle to upper class, straight, Christian men. In the Christian church, homosexuality is seen as immoral and a sin. If the people who control the media feel this way, then it’s only natural that they try and push their ideas on the public. Unfortunately this is a very effective way to get people to think of homosexual people as different and unpredictable. People also have a view on what a gay man and a lesbian woman should look like, and homosexual people are always classified into that particular group; they have to look a certain way and act a certain way, and people think that it’s possible to “act” gay as if all people of that sexual orientation are the same. You never hear people say “stop acting so straight”; heterosexuality is praised in the media. Gay and lesbian stereotypes are definitely detrimental to society. Not only do they enforce the notion of homosexual people being different but they also push the idea that women who do men’s work are “butch” and men who do women’s work are “effeminate and gay”, creating a barrier and discouraging those who want to obtain these sorts of jobs (Weston, 1996, pg. 4). Gay and lesbian people are constantly being labeled and judged by something that is out of their control. Another group of people that are constantly being judged and labeled for circumstances out of their control are people who suffer from mental illnesses
People who have mental disorders are always being judged and labeled as crazy. As soon as you hear someone is schizophrenic, for example you automatically get this vision of an unstable person who could lash out at anytime. You don’t know their background, if they’re on medication, or if they have recovered from the disease; you just react to the label. It seems as though time doesn’t play a factor either. No matter how long a person has known someone when they are hit with the schizophrenic label it seems like the person is now incapable of being the person they once were. Another example would be people with depression. Automatically people think “well, they’re just depressed that’s why they’re upset”. It seems as though emotional responses lose validity when accompanied by the fact that the person has a mental illness. Olmanns et al. discusses “labeling theory” that states that people may be diagnosed according to the cultures norms and how far they have stepped outside of the boundaries (2006, pg. 106). Oltmanns et. al discusses how labeling has a negative effect on the person. The stigma around mental disorders often prevents people from “obtaining jobs”, acquiring a home, or pursuing a relationship (2006, pg.106). People with mental illnesses have an extremely hard time shaking the label that comes with a diagnosis because people expect them to act a certain way, leading to the self-fulfilling prophecy problem. Another grouping of people which are frequently judged is people of different age groupings. Teenagers are probably the most stigmatized age group.
People have this vision of teens being irrational and incapable of making sensible decisions. Often, teenagers or people just coming out of their teens are blamed for crimes, such as graffiti or vandalism. Teenagers are immersed in a variety of cultures at their age. They dress in ways that could be considered provocative, or they dress in a way that gives them the label of “punk” or “thug”, even if that doesn’t match their true personality. Teenagers are also deemed incapable or their age is blamed when something goes wrong. “They’re at that age” is a common phrase when dealing with teens, supposedly signaling hormonal changes but that is blamed for almost everything that goes wrong. Another age group of people who are often stereotyped is elderly people. They are seen as helpless and disabled even though many elderly people do not require assistance. There is one age group that has purely beneficial stereotypes: young adults. After you reach that 18-44 age group you are suddenly seen as capable and trustworthy. People within this age group have supposedly hit their peak of attractiveness, and we live in a society where great emphasis is placed on how a person looks; it gives them credibility and would probably take priority when considering who to hire for certain jobs. This age group is usually the one where people start their careers and finish up their education. This age group is associated with getting a degree …show more content…
from post secondary education, adding credibility to your character. Certain occupations invoke the same response. Occupations are a part of life which contains many stereotypes, sometimes beneficial to society.
For example, a police officer or firefighter’s uniform is a positive stereotype because it invokes a feeling of being safe and knowing you can call on that person if you feel uneasy. Another example of a stereotyped uniform is that of a security officer or someone at a store. You automatically think “I can ask this person for help” and it creates the feeling of being secure. Any occupation where a uniform is required is bound to invoke a response in a person, whether it be a positive or negative one. Another generalization of an occupation would be that of a man in construction. Because it is so important for a man to be “tough” and “strong” in society, men in construction, who are usually doing hard labor, are seen as men’s men and tough guys. Men who are in professions such as hairdressing can be seen as effeminate and “gay”. Unfortunately this stigma seems as though it will remain even though the number of men doing “women’s work” is changing. According to statistics from the US census in the 90’s, only five percent of all nurses in the United States were male (Williams, 1995, pg.3). Another occupation that is stigmatized is that of the modeling industry. You see a model and automatically think “she has an eating disorder”, regardless of whether you know if she does for sure or not. The same goes for actresses who stay extremely thin to fit into sample
sizes.
In conclusion stereotypes can almost never be beneficial except in the example of the police and uniforms. Even so called positive stereotypes, where a person is praised like “Asians are good at math” can be detrimental because it can invoke feelings of inferiority when the person does not match this description. As long as stereotypes exist we will continue to group people into categories and judge them by their age, skin color, gender or any other classification. Society is segmented by stereotypes and what some people think of other people. People shouldn’t be judged based on things that can be totally irrelevant to their personalities. The way a person dresses, talks or acts should not be blamed solely on the individual’s group status but considered as traits of the individual. Some stereotypes will never be beneficial. Most of them have a detrimental effect on society, and no stereotype can be simply neutral.
References
Allen, Irving L. (1990). Unkind Words: Ethnic Labeling From Redskin to WASP. New
York: Bergin and Garvey.
Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. (2002). Ethnicity and Nationalism. London: Pluto Press.
Kitch, Carolyn. (2001). The Girl On the Magazine Cover. University of North Carolina
Press.
Oltmanns, T.F., Emery, R.E., Taylor, S. (2006). Abnormal Psychology. Toronto: Pearson
Education.
Prasso, Sheridan. (2005). The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, & Our
Fantasies of the Exotic Orient. New York: Publicaffairs.
Weston, Katherine.(1996). Render Me. Gender Me: Lesbians Talk Sex, Class, Color, Nation,
Studmuffins. New York: Columbia University Press.
Williams, Christine L. (1995). Still a Man’s World: Men Who Do Women’s Work. Los
Angeles: University of California Press.
Williams, F., La Rose R., Frost, F. (1981). Children, Television and Sex Role Stereotyping.
New York: Praeger Publishers.
stereotypes and even positive stereotypes can have an adverse effect; for example: all Asian people are good at math. That would seem to be a positive stereotype because it’s “praising” an ethnic group. However, when a member of an Asian ethnic group does not excel at math, people say things like “but you’re Asian! How could you be bad at math?!”. A supposedly positive stereotype could have an adverse effect because they still group all people into a category that not everyone fits into. Another example would be all Black people are good at basketball. A friend of my mother’s son tried playing basketball and he continued playing it even though he wanted to play soccer. I asked him why he didn’t switch sports and he said “because I’m Black and soccer is for White kids”. How do children internalize these ideas? Fredrick Williams, Robert LaRose and Frederica Frost suggest that children get these ideas from television (1981). During the lecture on the media and internalizing ideas we discovered that we are affected by television far more than we think we are. So do stereotypes stem only from the media? Do stereotypes have a detrimental, neutral or beneficial effect on society?
Ethnic stereotypes can come from religion and the media. They can be passed down through generations in families, they can be learned from people at school, and they can develop as a person gets older. Ethnic stereotypes can also be reflexive. A culture could have stereotypes about themselves. Eriksen provides a table containing stereotypes held by different cultures living in the Mauritius society (2002). The table is divided into stereotypes the people apply to themselves and stereotypes the people give to other cultures. The Creole people saw themselves as “funloving, compassionate and friendly” while the other cultures saw Creole people as “lazy, merry and careless” (Eriksen, 2002, pg.24). The Muslim people were seen as “religious fanatics” and “non-minglers”, but they saw themselves as “members of a proud, expanding culture”(Erikesen, 2002, pg.24). Stereotypes given to a culture by its own members can reinforce pride and a sense of unity. In that case, stereotypes are beneficial to the preservation of a culture and they enforce nationalism and in some cases patriotism. Eriksen argues that not all ethnic stereotypes are negative and that they can be quite beneficial; he says stereotypes help people to “create order in a complicated social universe” (Eriksen, 2002, pg.25). He states that stereotypes “give the individual the impression that they understand society” (Eriksen, 2002, pg.25). However Eriksen also says that stereotypes can have the “self-fulfilling prophecy” effect (Eriksen, 2002, pg.25). In some cultures where a certain race is looked down upon, a member of that ethnic group can be made to feel inferior or they can be denied certain privileges based solely on their ethnic background (Eriksen, 2002, pg.25). A good example of this would be the status of African-American’s during the early 20th century. When the Jim Crow laws were in place segregation was found everywhere. An African-American person couldn’t find a high-paying job, could not go to post secondary and they couldn’t even share the same washroom or drinking fountain with the Caucasian-Americans. A lot of them adopted the attitude of “that’s just how life goes” because of the pressure of society to make it seem like there were no other options.
Many ethnic stereotypes are perpetuated by the media, and those images are almost always negative or detrimental. Asian people are martial arts masters, or they are made to speak with heavy accents for comedic purposes. Black people are usually thieves, gang members, or made to sound uneducated. Hispanic people are almost never in a position where they are business people are people in higher occupations and are nearly always speaking with a heavy Mexican accent. Jewish people are associated with stinginess. Italian American people are seen as mafia members. First Nations people are seen as alcoholics and belong in the “other” category; I was reading the daily 24 hours free newspaper and the caption of the cover picture was “Many people showed up to object including aboriginal protesters”. When I read this the first time it seemed normal but I thought about it and the fact that they were First Nations is completely irrelevant. If it had said “Many people showed up to object including Caucasian protesters” people would definitely think twice. Irish people are seen as rowdy drunks and little is known about true Irish culture. St. Patrick’s Day was originally the day to honor the day the patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick, died. Now people think of it as a drinking holiday and it has lost its holy and sacred meaning. Although a lot of people are aware that these are stereotypes we still internalize them and judge members of an ethnicity from information we get in the media and our own personal prejudices. Irving Lewis Allen states that ethnic stereotypes are even becoming part of everyday language, for example saying you were “jewed or gypped” out of something means you were cheated or ripped off. These stereotypes are definitely negative; in the study of ethnic stereotypes there are almost no positives. Some people may be able to play up their ethnicity to gain benefits in society but even that enforces that boundary of “us and them”.
Gender stereotypes are very prevalent in our society. There are men’s roles, and then there are women’s roles. There are men’s jobs, and then there are women’s jobs. Men can be strong, aggressive and assertive. Women can be soft, submissive and subservient, and are in fact supposed to be. Men can have multiple partners and that is considered more acceptable than a woman who does the same. There are still such strong sexual stereotypes to do with a man and a woman that can invoke fear in many situations such as a woman being home alone and a man comes to the door asking for help. The fact that she is a woman may affect her choice to open the door, since men are shown to always be overpowering women. Some gender stereotypes however can be somewhat beneficial. Like I mentioned before, men are seen as the stronger and more able sex, therefore they can be seen as dominant. Women who possess the same qualities are seen as cold hearted and too masculine. This stereotype has existed for many years and is found worldwide. Carolyn Kitch states that this idea was made “popular in the first” thirty years of the century (Kitch, 2001, pg.3). Women are always being sexualized in the media. Women are shown as being seductive and readily available. The media is most likely responsible for this stereotype. For a long time people were blaming the victim in rape cases. What a woman wore and what her occupation was changed her credibility. If she was wearing a short skirt she was asking for it, because the media portrays women who wear such clothing as sexually promiscuous. Sheridan Prasso talks about how this sexualized stereotype is especially strong in Asian cultures; Prasso states that Asian women in Asian countries are trained to cater to tourists and visitors and in turn these people go back to their home countries with the expectation that all Asian women will be this way (Prasso, 2005, p. 5). Is this a detrimental or beneficial stereotype? The “Asian mystique” is not necessarily entirely bad but it enforces the idea of male dominance in a society and again groups all Asian women into this one category.
Christine Williams touches upon the subject of “men’s work” and “women’s work” and she gives examples of how this is perpetuated in the media. She talks about the movie Kindergarten Cop, where Arnold Schwarzenegger goes undercover as a kindergarten teacher (Williams, 1995). He can’t deal with little five year old children, enforcing the idea that a “real man” is incapable of doing a “woman’s work” (Williams, 1995, pg.3). There has recently been a rise of men in “women’s” jobs. There are more men becoming elementary school teachers, social workers, librarians and nurses (Williams, 1995, pg.3). However some jobs seem as though they will always be gender classified such as hairdressing or housekeeping. Unless the man is a barber there is a stereotypical notion that the man is gay or very feminine.
Then there is the subject of gay men and how they are always portrayed as being extremely feminine. There are movies, such as Brokeback Mountain which attempt to dissolve such stereotypes but the generalization remains. There is also the reverse stereotype that lesbians are masculine. Some people have the stereotype that being homosexual is a disease, or they think that all homosexual people will be attracted to everyone of the same sex. In high school there was a talk at my school about sexual orientation and tolerance and this is one of the issues that came up. They asked everyone if they were attracted to all members of the opposite sex and of course we all said no. Then they asked why we thought (or some of us thought) that all homosexual people would be attracted to all members of the same sex. The issue of acceptance is being blocked by negative stereotypes and taboos in our society. Where do these stereotypes stem from? In the lecture we discussed how most of the people who control the media are white, middle to upper class, straight, Christian men. In the Christian church, homosexuality is seen as immoral and a sin. If the people who control the media feel this way, then it’s only natural that they try and push their ideas on the public. Unfortunately this is a very effective way to get people to think of homosexual people as different and unpredictable. People also have a view on what a gay man and a lesbian woman should look like, and homosexual people are always classified into that particular group; they have to look a certain way and act a certain way, and people think that it’s possible to “act” gay as if all people of that sexual orientation are the same. You never hear people say “stop acting so straight”; heterosexuality is praised in the media. Gay and lesbian stereotypes are definitely detrimental to society. Not only do they enforce the notion of homosexual people being different but they also push the idea that women who do men’s work are “butch” and men who do women’s work are “effeminate and gay”, creating a barrier and discouraging those who want to obtain these sorts of jobs (Weston, 1996, pg. 4). Gay and lesbian people are constantly being labeled and judged by something that is out of their control. Another group of people that are constantly being judged and labeled for circumstances out of their control are people who suffer from mental illnesses
People who have mental disorders are always being judged and labeled as crazy. As soon as you hear someone is schizophrenic, for example you automatically get this vision of an unstable person who could lash out at anytime. You don’t know their background, if they’re on medication, or if they have recovered from the disease; you just react to the label. It seems as though time doesn’t play a factor either. No matter how long a person has known someone when they are hit with the schizophrenic label it seems like the person is now incapable of being the person they once were. Another example would be people with depression. Automatically people think “well, they’re just depressed that’s why they’re upset”. It seems as though emotional responses lose validity when accompanied by the fact that the person has a mental illness. Olmanns et al. discusses “labeling theory” that states that people may be diagnosed according to the cultures norms and how far they have stepped outside of the boundaries (2006, pg. 106). Oltmanns et. al discusses how labeling has a negative effect on the person. The stigma around mental disorders often prevents people from “obtaining jobs”, acquiring a home, or pursuing a relationship (2006, pg.106). People with mental illnesses have an extremely hard time shaking the label that comes with a diagnosis because people expect them to act a certain way, leading to the self-fulfilling prophecy problem. Another grouping of people which are frequently judged is people of different age groupings. Teenagers are probably the most stigmatized age group.
People have this vision of teens being irrational and incapable of making sensible decisions. Often, teenagers or people just coming out of their teens are blamed for crimes, such as graffiti or vandalism. Teenagers are immersed in a variety of cultures at their age. They dress in ways that could be considered provocative, or they dress in a way that gives them the label of “punk” or “thug”, even if that doesn’t match their true personality. Teenagers are also deemed incapable or their age is blamed when something goes wrong. “They’re at that age” is a common phrase when dealing with teens, supposedly signaling hormonal changes but that is blamed for almost everything that goes wrong. Another age group of people who are often stereotyped is elderly people. They are seen as helpless and disabled even though many elderly people do not require assistance. There is one age group that has purely beneficial stereotypes: young adults. After you reach that 18-44 age group you are suddenly seen as capable and trustworthy. People within this age group have supposedly hit their peak of attractiveness, and we live in a society where great emphasis is placed on how a person looks; it gives them credibility and would probably take priority when considering who to hire for certain jobs. This age group is usually the one where people start their careers and finish up their education. This age group is associated with getting a degree …show more content…
from post secondary education, adding credibility to your character. Certain occupations invoke the same response. Occupations are a part of life which contains many stereotypes, sometimes beneficial to society.
For example, a police officer or firefighter’s uniform is a positive stereotype because it invokes a feeling of being safe and knowing you can call on that person if you feel uneasy. Another example of a stereotyped uniform is that of a security officer or someone at a store. You automatically think “I can ask this person for help” and it creates the feeling of being secure. Any occupation where a uniform is required is bound to invoke a response in a person, whether it be a positive or negative one. Another generalization of an occupation would be that of a man in construction. Because it is so important for a man to be “tough” and “strong” in society, men in construction, who are usually doing hard labor, are seen as men’s men and tough guys. Men who are in professions such as hairdressing can be seen as effeminate and “gay”. Unfortunately this stigma seems as though it will remain even though the number of men doing “women’s work” is changing. According to statistics from the US census in the 90’s, only five percent of all nurses in the United States were male (Williams, 1995, pg.3). Another occupation that is stigmatized is that of the modeling industry. You see a model and automatically think “she has an eating disorder”, regardless of whether you know if she does for sure or not. The same goes for actresses who stay extremely thin to fit into sample
sizes.
In conclusion stereotypes can almost never be beneficial except in the example of the police and uniforms. Even so called positive stereotypes, where a person is praised like “Asians are good at math” can be detrimental because it can invoke feelings of inferiority when the person does not match this description. As long as stereotypes exist we will continue to group people into categories and judge them by their age, skin color, gender or any other classification. Society is segmented by stereotypes and what some people think of other people. People shouldn’t be judged based on things that can be totally irrelevant to their personalities. The way a person dresses, talks or acts should not be blamed solely on the individual’s group status but considered as traits of the individual. Some stereotypes will never be beneficial. Most of them have a detrimental effect on society, and no stereotype can be simply neutral.
References
Allen, Irving L. (1990). Unkind Words: Ethnic Labeling From Redskin to WASP. New
York: Bergin and Garvey.
Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. (2002). Ethnicity and Nationalism. London: Pluto Press.
Kitch, Carolyn. (2001). The Girl On the Magazine Cover. University of North Carolina
Press.
Oltmanns, T.F., Emery, R.E., Taylor, S. (2006). Abnormal Psychology. Toronto: Pearson
Education.
Prasso, Sheridan. (2005). The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, & Our
Fantasies of the Exotic Orient. New York: Publicaffairs.
Weston, Katherine.(1996). Render Me. Gender Me: Lesbians Talk Sex, Class, Color, Nation,
Studmuffins. New York: Columbia University Press.
Williams, Christine L. (1995). Still a Man’s World: Men Who Do Women’s Work. Los
Angeles: University of California Press.
Williams, F., La Rose R., Frost, F. (1981). Children, Television and Sex Role Stereotyping.
New York: Praeger Publishers.