Gender Roles In Spencer Cahill's Fashioning Gender Identity

In magazines aimed at the general population, including Sports Illustrated and Vanity Fair, women are oversexualized with provocative slogans, little to no clothing, and electronically edited photos. This creates an apparent distinction between what the media reinforces as the ideal woman and what women really look like. Here, a phenomenon called the feminine beauty ideal arises. The feminine beauty ideal is "the socially constructed notion that physical attractiveness is one of women 's most important assets, and something all women should strive to achieve and maintain." (Spade 3) In turn, the socialization of younger girls who aspire to look like the unreal values depicted by mass media creates a cycle of unhappiness and depression, one that is unhealthy to maintain. In the case of the MarkTen e-vapor advertisement, a female character is shown smoking. Although most of …show more content…
These roles are constructed by society and through social interactions. Slowly, we can determine which of our behavior receives positive sanctions and we begin to conform to those gender roles. In Spencer Cahill’s “Fashioning Gender Identity,” he explains that adults treat babies differently based on their sex, starting from the earliest days of infancy. This is the beginning of an identity that children begin to develop and eventually goes on to become a sex-class. By associating emotions, attitudes, and even colors with a specific gender, children learn that there are two different types of people. The findings suggest that the mainstream socialization efforts by media advertisements have established a set of qualities that make males and females inherently perceive each other as males or females. For example, being passive, caring, and emotional denotes female tendencies. Conversely, being competitive, unemotional, and independent are the characteristics of a male. (Sociological,