The media likes to pressure people. It tells us how to dress, act, what to eat and what to think. We are slowly bent to fit into constructed stereotypes depending on our age, race and gender.
Gender roles as portrayted by our media are extremely damaging. They force people into boxes, and they create extreme amounts of pressure on marginalized groups until somone snaps.
Consider the discussion of gender roles and rape. There is a pressure on women to always look good. The media tells men to objectify women and to be masculine.
Men and women are pitted against each other, each being told to act a certain way toward the opposite sex, to judge or to objectify. It’s all a side effect of the media we consume.
When we apply the stereotypes that are fed to us, people get hurt. Women are raped by men who have been told to see them as sexual objects. Men are killed by women who snap under pressure. It goes on and on.
There’s a surprisingly elegant solution, even though these are not ?simple issues.
Stop being superficial. Stop seeing what the media wants you to see, and start seeing your fellow human beings and yourself as you are. Raise your awareness when you’re consuming media. It is possible to redefine femininity and masculinity, but it takes a social awareness and time for these social constructs that have been perpetually reciprocated for decades to cease hurting people.
This is not to say that there aren’t other factors at play than the media and its consumption. Parents, people in positions of power and peer pressure, can all damage a person.
But as people still conform to socially acceptable gender roles, women everywhere are still exploited as sexual objects. Men everywhere still fail to understand why sexually targeting women is wrong. It’s become clear that we need to start with the images and ?stereotypes we consume.
If people stop perpetuating the stereotype of men and women looking and being a certain way, we’ll all be so much ?better off.
I get it. Change is scary. But more to the point, insecurity pushes men and women to the point of conformity. If someone isn’t telling them what to wear or think, the heavy weight of simply existing begins to fracture their fragile identities. But we desperately need people who think differently, who will break these ?gender molds.
Our world is constantly changing and maintaining these old gender stereotypes, and that is dangerous and, honestly, just stupid.
Start with the media. Pay attention to what you’re watching and what you’re listening to. Don’t take everything at face value. Don’t just be ?another zombie.
Challenge what the media tells you to do, and be different.
michoman@indiana.edu
