Stereotypes are really useful in media as they help the
audience to understand characters better and therefore if the director wants a ditsy
and dumb character he will choose an actress who is blonde, thin and
attractive. This means that there is little explaining to do about the
character's personality, actions and behavior because common stereotypes in
the media have given us as viewers, a strong perception as to what someone with that matching appearance act, think and behave.
However, stereotypes
can be very damaging once they are replicated from media context and taken into
our everyday lives.
Because of common stereotypes, when we see or meet someone
for the first time who matches a stereotypical look, we perceive them to be
completely identical to that stereotype and so that person is often
misrepresented. After we have made a misrepresentation of someone it will take us a long time for us to break that stereotype. Repetition of certain stereotypes
in the media today have caused us to relate them back to real life and potentially
harming, sexist and rude stereotypes are perceived by people as normal and
nothing out of the ordinary. This can be quite worrying and harmful especially for teenage girls in the 21st century.
In this documentary "Miss Representation" the
narrator mentions the fact that girls are used to seeing other girls
represented in the media to be weaker and less powerful in comparison to men. We are also used to
seeing girls/woman represented in a sexual light through the use of provocative
clothing, dance moves and dialogue due to the repetitive representation of girls portrayed in this way in everyday media such as Megan Fox (shown below in a bikini) on the television program "Two and a Half Men".
These common stereotypes has a huge effect on the young women nowadays as by seeing the same representation of women constantly in the media we are lead to believe that this is how women should act, think and behave and if you don't act, think and behave in such a way which mirrors this media representation you are often seen as an outsider in society today. This is a very dangerous thought because as the decades continue, more and more young women are going to be lead to believe that this representation is how we should be, creating a very superficial and weak society in terms of women's power and influence in a positive and educational way.
The stereotype of women in the media has definitely had a
negative effect on many women in the 21st century especially with a lot of
girls believing that they cannot be as strong and as powerful as their male
counterparts. One example of this is shown through the fact that the majority
of the most powerful professions able to be attained in our world today such as
politics and medicine belong to males rather than females. Men are more often
than not portrayed in the media as powerful, strong, smart and definitely more
capable of the high-end jobs than their women counterparts- very damaging
statistics for the young women of the 21st century. If this continues to occur (less and less
women obtaining high end jobs) society nowadays may spiral backwards to be
alike to pre-21st century where women didn't work at all because
they were only thought able to stay at home and look after the children and
their husbands. Due to us teenage girls conforming to the common stereotype of girls in the media, this is more likely to happen than not.
The common repetition of the teenage girl stereotype/s in
the media cause society as a whole to believe that all teenage girls act and
behave in this manner (provocative, dumb and catty) and are only capable of
what this stereotype portrays. This means that the girls who do not meet the
expectations of the stereotype are seen to be different, unusual and perhaps
ugly with foul comments being spoken about them constantly and causing them to feel like an outsider in society. These people who
don’t fit the stereotype are subject to bullying, harassment and injury all due
to the fact that they don’t meet what the media portrays to be an accurate
representation of a young woman.
Other results of teenage girls being represented in the
media in this way is self-harm, eating disorders, depression and even suicide.
The statistics have been quickly climbing throughout the past decade as media
increases in consumption. Studies have shown that 53% of 13 year old girls in
the USA are unhappy with their bodies, and that it increases to 78% by age 17. This
insecurity is what causes self-harm, eating disorders, depression and
unfortunately suicide to occur. These are alarming statistics for the youth of
our world and although these effects on teenage girls may not be only because
of stereotypes and representation of teenage girls in the media, it is quite
evident that this is a huge contributing factor. This is made very clear in the
documentary "Miss Representation".
We keep seeing the same stereotypes of teenage girls in the media over and over again because the majority of people in our world are very aware and familiar to them. This familiarity of the stereotype of teenage girls in the media is what sells the magazines, films and games. If there is a girl on the front of a magazine who isn't as thin or doesn't have skin that is as perfect as we are used to seeing on the covers of magazines, they will not be bought with such high demand. It doesn't matter that the “perfect” models on magazines have been extremely photo-shopped to the point where they are almost unrecognizable; society has been led to believe that this perfection is normal and therefore we should all aim to look like that (even though it is humanly impossible). People who don't fit the stereotypical teenage girl behavior are not as widely known to society and therefore are usually the outcasts.
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