Social Scientific Foundations Of Communication

Female stereotypes and false images of women have been a rising topic in the media today. Stereotypes are anything that categorizes a large group of people into having one or many characteristics that may or may not actually be representative of who they are. This is an increasing problem in our society because it does not represent who these people actually are and instead makes people believe that they are something else. An example of a female stereotype that many people can relate to or have at least heard of is the stereotype that blond women are air heads. By placing this stereotype on women, many women are judged and thought less of because of the color of their hair. This is simply one example of a stereotype that is prevalent in today's society. The reason that I find female stereotypes like this so interesting is because I am a woman and my goal for this project is to find out if female stereotypes such as this one actually affect the way that women perceive themselves. I am also going to analyze female images that are showed in the media and try to discover the effect that these have on women today.

The theory that goes along with my study is Cultural Criticism Theory. The reason for this is because this theory discusses the way that different cultures can affect how the media is perceived because it represents it in different ways. In many cultures, women are seen as sex objects for men and are looked down upon. They are often stereotyped in many situations because of the way that certain cultures represent them. This is a big problem and the basis of my study.

There are many studies out there that relate to media stereotypes and the false images of women. Many of these studies try to find out how these stereotypes can effect how both men and women look at women as a whole. One such study that relates to stereotypes in the media is the study called The Skinny on Body Size Requests in Personal Ads, by Erica J. Miller, Jane Ellen Smith, and David L. Trembath. This essay looked at how the content in personal ads in the newspaper can have a negative affect on the way that both men and women perceive themselves. For this study 547 personal ads addressed to ad writers were mailed out to study what people's preferences were in regards to appearance in personal ads today. This was done in the form of a survey. The choices that most people selected from were a thin partner, a physically fit partner, and there were some people who had no ideal weight type in mind at all. The purpose of the research in this article was to see if the personal ads that people wrote stressed the importance of their desired partner being thin. The theory that was used in this article was the exchange theory. The exchange theory talked about how wealthy men who can support a partner should have the right to look for a younger more attractive woman in personal ads because they can support them. It was basically saying that men who think that they are the best should be able to request the best women.

There were many findings in this article that were interesting. One of the questions that the study was seeking to answer was whether men requesting a thin partner were discriminating against women in the normal weight range or perhaps were just trying to keep overweight women from responding to their ads. The study found that men who indicated that they wanted a lighter weight partner wanted someone who was thinner than other men who wrote in. The result of this shows that the men are actually blocking responses from women because they feel as though they do not fit the criteria that the man wants. Based on this finding alone, it can be hypothesized that women think less of themselves because they are unwilling to respond to personal ads that seek out thin women, even if they are in fact thin. Even though personal ads are not considered a major part of media and are typically overlooked, they still have a great influence on how women look at themselves in relation to what men want. Another major finding from the article is that there were a larger number of males than females that made a low- weight request in their personal ads. This finding also has a lot of meaning behind it. It is saying that there are more men than women who consider the opposite sex to be more desirable when they have a thinner body type. This may affect women more psychologically because they must try and fit and ideal body image for the opposite gender while this is not stressed as much in males.

Another article that talked about female stereotypes and images in the media was a study called Formal vs. informal Use of Television and Sex Role Stereotyping in Hong Kong by Anthony Fung and Eric Ma. In this study, a large group of people from Hong Kong were taken at random and given a questionnaire to fill out. This survey was testing three major components that are in the media. These included sex role stereotypes, media use, and media awareness. There were not any specific theories used in this study however, there was one major idea that was presented. The main idea that was stressed in this study was called the social-learning approach. This approach explained the portrayal of sex-roles by stating that children are rewarded for acting like members of their own sex. Because they are rewarded for this behavior, they pay more attention to people of their own gender and learn more from them.

There were many findings in this study. From the data that was collected from the surveys it was found that people from Hong Kong are very stereotypical in regard to different genders. This study specifically showed that males were stereotypically more masculine in some areas of television and that women are actually more stereotypic of female images on television. Another question that the study was trying to answer was whether or not these stereotypical images affected people who watched more hours of television compared to people who watched fewer hours of television. The study found that there is no correlation between the hours of television watched and the awareness of stereotypical images presented to the viewer. Another interesting finding from the study showed that the entertainment part of television actually reinforced and created the stereotypes present today. The informational us of television did not reinforce these stereotypes, which was a question that this study was also trying to uncover.

A third article that addressed the issue of stereotypes in the media was an article called Gender Role Stereotypes in Advertisements on Two British Radio Stations by Adrian Furnham and Louise Thomson. This study looked at the stereotypes that were presented in radio advertisements. The article reviewed other studies that used content analysis as their methodology and then replicated their study using a different location and different radio stations to see if these stereotypes still existed ten years after the first study was done. They still used content analysis as their methodology. The radio advertisements were taken from London Broadcasting Company (LBC) and Capital Radio. The advertisements were taken during the morning, afternoon, and evening over the course of a week and then analyzed for their content. The content being looked at was credibility, roles, location, arguments, type of reward, type of product, accent, and narrator. There was no theory that was presented in this particular study. They were simply doing a follow up study on a content analysis that was done ten years earlier to see if the same stereotypes were still present. The findings from this study showed that there was little decrease in the amount that the stereotypes appeared in advertisements on the radio. Advertisements from London Broadcasting Company showed that eighty percent of central characters in advertisements were males while only twenty percent were females. These percentages were similar to what Capital Radio showed for the central character in their advertisements aired on their station. Advertisements from London Broadcasting Company showed women to be in more dependent roles than men. In both advertising stations, men were significantly less likely to be seen in advertisements regarding body, home, and food. These were roles that were mostly reserved for women. With stereotypes like these on the radio, it is no wonder why women are thought less of at times and are affected more by these portrayals.

The above studies were very helpful when addressing the issues that I wanted to find out more about. The study that I did was to try and see how female stereotypes and images of women in the media affected the way that people perceived these images today. I did a survey with ten random University of Iowa students and analyzed the results of that survey. This survey asked both questions regarding stereotypes and images of women in today's society. Both men and women answered the questions in order to get a full range of opinions from both genders. When asked whether male characters on television have more important roles than female characters, forty percent of the males agreed to this while sixty percent of the males disagreed with this statement. None of the female respondents felt that males had a more dominant role in the media. They generally thought that roles between genders were becoming more equal.

In order to find out about the images of women on television, I asked certain questions regarding body types. I asked all of the respondents whether they believed actresses like Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox were too skinny on television. All of the males agreed that they were not too thin and that they looked healthy while all of the women who responded to this survey agreed that actresses like these are in fact too thin. The question that was asked after that was whether or not they thought it would be better if these actresses gained some weight. Almost all of the female respondents agreed to this while none of the male respondents agreed. The meaning behind asking these two questions was to see the differences between the way that men and women looked at images of women on television. When asked if the respondents were happy with their bodies after viewing thin images of women on television, forty percent of the women said that they were happy while forty percent said that they were not happy with their bodies. One respondent was undecided. When the male respondents were asked this same question, forty percent of males were unhappy with their bodies after viewing images of thin girls on television and sixty percent said that they were happy with their bodies. Eighty percent of these male respondents were also on some kind of diet or were at least trying to maintain a body weight while all of the women respondents said that they were on a diet or trying to maintain a certain body weight. When the respondents were asked if they thought that the media caused some problems like anorexia and bulimia in today's society, every respondent agreed that the media was a part of why people suffered from these disorders. When addressing gender roles on television, I asked the respondents if they thought that males (who generally do have more major roles on television) would feel threatened by women who are in high positions. Sixty percent of the men said that they would feel threatened by this namely because it is still a new idea and not accepted by all. Forty percent said that they would not feel threatened by this. One hundred percent of the women who responded felt that women who held a higher position threatened men. This may actually be a reason for why men are showed in higher positions on television. This was not supported in this survey however. If the majority of men show that this threatens them, then women in high positions are not going to be shown on television to reduce the feeling of threat.

Female stereotypes and certain images of women in the media have a bigger effect on society than everyone thinks. The survey that I did and the articles that were analyzed proved that both men and women are affected by the images of women on television and the stereotypes that go along with these images. From my study it can be concluded that most women today feel that they need to try and change the way they look to be more like women on television today. Through the use of Cultural Criticism Theory I have shown that images and stereotypes of women in the media are based primarily on how the culture perceives these images and how cultures have certain expectations of people in society. By looking at the articles, you can also see how Cultural Criticism Theory affects such places like London and Hong Kong. The effects of female stereotypes and certain images in the media can do more harm than good sometimes and this is something that needs to be changed.