Gender Roles

For our group digital story project we are are pairing up with another class to look further into gender roles and the effects that it has. After watching a couple of videos in class we were asked to look further into this. As a result the most common discussion is the typical stereotypes associated with each gender. In the video sports illustrated was brought up. The film broke down all of the different sections it had. For instance, in all issues women were portrayed as helpless and usually less clothed than the men. It was quite the opposite for men. They were portrayed to have this dominance and superiority and masculinity. It went further to replace the male models with female models striking the pose that a male model would. The same goes for the female models with men. After this transition everything seemed to be off. Our group decided to pursue this issue further. We looked for all of the examples as to things that go against the typical stereotypes of women. We looked for women who showed power and dominance and men that looked sensitive and fragile. Our results were astounding. One thing in particular stuck out. It was a female who had recently gotten involved into body building. She started off as a bartender and eventually took up lifting in her spare time. As her training got more and more serious she began steroid use. She became so masculine in her physique that she began dressing as a man because people were accusing her of being a man dressing up as a woman. This and many other examples are evidence that we are quick to judge with these stereotypes on what a male and female should look or act like.