Examining The Influence Of Popular Culture In Gender Identities

Explore the ways in which gender is portrayed and shaped by popular culture. 

Gender as a Culturally Constructed Role

Gender is a culturally built roles and expectations that are associated to femininity and masculinity. The cultural politics are very important to feminism as they involve struggles more than meaning (Zavella 2018). In modern days, popular culture is present in near about every aspect of current society. Popular culture usually refers to the narratives, images and the ideas, which circulates within the ordinary culture. Though most of the people view popular culture just as a form of entertainment, but it fact, it is way more than that. Society that is seen today is molded and given a shape through numerous elements of popular culture. Especially, popular culture or pop culture has gradually shaped the lens, by which the society look to the growing controversial topics of race, gender, ethnicity and class. For instance, the television shows have made it clear that the stereotypes concerning to such issues are yet universally used as well as accepted. Particularly, the reality shows in television such as the Survivor- portrays many of the stereotypical characteristics of masculinity and femininity. However, this paper is going to elaborate on examining the influence of popular culture in gender identities.

Although the traditional feminists have now taken difference in perspective to popular culture, still they have shared two important assumptions. The very first assumption is that the women have a specific relationship to popular culture, which is dissimilar to that from men’s. The second one is that if women are to achieve control over their individual identities and if they are to change both the social relationships and mythologies, then they have to understand the phenomena of how the popular culture functions for the patriarchal culture as well as for the women (Bepko 2014). According to the feminists, popular culture plays a very important role in the patriarchal society and they say that the theoretical analysis of their role permits a major position in the ongoing analysis. It is seen that the feminists are often interested in the popular culture. This is because of three major reasons. Firstly, popular culture is prevalent cultural force and is the site of patriarchy as well. Secondly, the women are often portrayed very poorly and are considered to be weak. Thirdly, it is usually women who enjoy popular culture; still it is seldom taken seriously. 

In context to the condition of men; Men have a very different history of suppression, exploitation, oppression and abuse. However, still it is worth critically examining the manner in which the men are and have been portrayed within the popular culture as masculinity has its own order of power. They key theme in the representation of men consists of Hegemonic Masculinity. It is a hierarchy, which rewards men who are portrayed as heterosexual, strong, usually white and are physical (Gieseler 2014). It encourages the men to occupy a commanding and ruling position in the society. The next is the hyper masculinity. It is considered as overcompensation and it often display of the “macho” masculinity, which reveals anxiety about the identity. The examination of men and masculinity in relation to the popular culture is a comparatively underexplored field. It has emerged as an area of academic study in the last 20 years. However, the popular culture is usually related to the misinterpretation of the women and the audiences of the popular culture are usually expected and thought of as the females. In earlier days, women were not represented. They were mainly invisible. Although, there were times when they were represented, but it was only as a sexual objects or in the home or any private sphere. The women were considered to be interdependent, while the men were independent. They were usually represented as a taken for granted objects. It is to be noted that in the 1970s, 74% of women characters on the television were all concerned with parenthood, domesticity and marriage as compared to the men, which was of about 18% (Chesney-Lind and Pasko 2013). With the same, in the 1950s to 1970s, only 20 to 35 percent of the television or the film characters were females (Sewell 2013).

Popular Culture as a Shaping Force

Within the modern media, we do not have tendency to notice the dissimilar language and the constructed associated with certain gender, for instance, the subtitles in the magazine covers. Some of the magazines for women are centered on the sexual health, complexion and how to achieve a man’s approval and attention. On the other hand, for men, these magazines are all about competition, wealth and power (Gripsrud 2017). Hence, no matter where a person is, the colors of pink and blue are still blurring or misting the lines of equality. Although the current period have come a long way since the females were not permitted to be visible and were expected to be invisible all the time, the contexts that are related to the women continue to put this period too as a supporting item to a male. It is observed that the covers and the magazines with the picture of men on them usually have men with different looks. On the other hand, women on the magazine covers tend to have similar qualities- they are slim, posing in a submissive way, has long hair (Bazzini et al. 2015). It is rarely seen that a heavy weighted woman or a woman from minority is pictured on a cover, until and unless she is extremely successful. 

As the years passed by, concepts of masculinity and femininity have been distinctly defined as well as engrained into the society of modern world. The term masculinity could be described as a strong or powerful, hardworking and in control (Mills 2017). Man is commonly known to be rations, independent and aggressive. On the other hand, the term femininity is described as powerless, sensitive, beautiful, emotional and simply weak; neither more nor less. Women are widely known as passive and emotional. This is so because these are the adjectives that are so long been associated with masculinity and femininity and they are also entrenched into the popular culture of today. Believing that men are less emotional than women and women are less powerful than men is a stereotype. Nevertheless, such stereotyping is not completely untrue. More than biological or hereditary factors, it is the cultural and the environmental factors that boost up the development and growth of gender roles. Development of these gender roles in between men and women requires the surmise of the peer community of each of the gender, along with the connection level, or say, the intimacy of men and women and the communication style of both of them.

Feminist Perspectives on Popular Culture and Gender Identity

The gender stereotypes existing in the popular culture from thousands of years that has established the gender roles have been a major segment of our society. To begin with, it is very important to distinguish the attitudes and important values of the two of the different communities. One of such stereotype is that both status and power are very important in the community of males, whereas in that of females, networks and cooperation are very significant (Cuddy et al. 2015). For example, during their childhood, the boys often fight along with their friends or peers and try to win to show that they are both strong in power and high in status than the others. On the other hand, the girls rarely fight or quarrel with their friends and they in fact, usually make a group or community and then cooperate with each other for a certain purpose. With the same, men are living in a hierarchical life and they constantly struggle in order to save their status of being superior in the society, while the women often like to show similarity and intimacy. Moreover, where men give value to independence; women often tend to make closer relationships with each other. 

According to the second stereotype, man and woman both tend to have difference in their style of communication while they talk about their problems (Ibarra and Kolb 2013). As men and women with very different ways of life use the communication from dissimilar culture, and the same words build detrimental outcomes like lack of coordination, conflicts, misunderstanding etc. Women often seek for the feeling of community and unity in their relationships. When a girl or female shares her problem with other female friends of her, the conversational partner shall express an understanding as if she is well aware of what her situation is like. For instance, when a women talks regarding her problem, the interlocutor often answers- “Yes, I can understand how you feel. I am stressed as well.” She tries to build up a connection so as to help her feel better by showing care and understanding. With the same, the reaction of the interlocutor does not force the speaker to change the topic, letting her speak her heart out and that too for a long time so that she could feel better sharing it to her. They may then feel closer and connected to each other after the talk. However, it is to be noticed that men usually respond differently to the expression of problems. To the same situation as discussed above, a man might have respond to it saying- “Do not worry. I know you will get over it with the passage of time. Do know that you will be alright in the end”. Such type of answers can never satisfy a woman; instead, it will make her feel as if her problem is unimportant and is not at all understood. This is because, in this way, the man is giving her an impression of being better, high-grade or superior, as he in this way is portraying an image that he does not have the problem at all. It makes the women feel that he is less bothered or is less interested in her problem; hence the topic is bound to change. Hence, the typical response by the side of the man to the problem of the woman might upset her and she may feel bad about sharing her issues with him. This will result in lack of intimacy among them. Finally, females tend to share fewer secrets and details of their own for building up connection and intimacy (Miller 2015). The mutual interests in the lives of each other actually strengthen the bond between two female friends. Connection and intimacy are very important values for the women and hence, their conversations always tend to be private and personal and often they also talk and discuss about the private lives of any third parties. On the other hand, the men are rarely seen to discuss about their private lives or anyone else’s. They usually discuss about the incidental or the peripheral things such as sports, everyday news and politics. They do not like to share their personal secrets or any small details of their lives with anyone else. This is because many people believe that if men discuss as women do; they has feminine quality (Norton and Herek 2013). Men always have a propensity to protect their independence and to avert their vulnerability. With the same, the other reason for why men have a tendency of not sharing their personal secrets with other people as much as women do is that they do not feel the need of a woman for intimacy. 

Representation of Men in Popular Culture

Hence, it is to be concluded that popular culture does not always do fair jobs in reflecting the accurate characteristics of the men and women. The society has contributed to this by establishing what is known as gender roles among the men and women. There are like social guidelines that they must follow in order to get accepted by the societies of modern world. Overall, the gender stereotypes in the popular culture states that difference has been resolute by the peer community of the similar sex since the men and women were at their young age. As the young children are usually affected and influenced by both their peers and the older generations such as their parents or their teachers under male-dominated culture, is quite convincing. However, both men and women must understand the different communication style and to avoid stereotyping, they must keep in mind the different values of intimacy and connection in order to prevent stereotyping. Above all, they must try to see the point of view of others instead of their own standards 

References:

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Cuddy, A.J., Wolf, E.B., Glick, P., Crotty, S., Chong, J. and Norton, M.I., 2015. Men as cultural ideals: Cultural values moderate gender stereotype content. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(4), p.622.

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Miller, J.B., 2015. The healing connection: How women form relationships in therapy and in life. Beacon Press.

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Norton, A.T. and Herek, G.M., 2013. Heterosexuals’ attitudes toward transgender people: Findings from a national probability sample of US adults. Sex roles, 68(11-12), pp.738-753.

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Zavella, P., 2018. Feminist insider dilemmas: Constructing ethnic identity with Chicana informants. In Feminist dilemmas in fieldwork (pp. 138-159). Routledge.