Media Influence On Gender Roles

Gender Roles in Mainstream Media Gender roles are something we are taught from a very young age. During our formative years, we start to associate clothing and hair styles as being masculine or feminine. In our media today, traditional gender roles are being slowly changed to where men are being shown to be taking on more feminine roles and women are acquiring more masculine roles. Mad Men, a television show on AMC, shows the traditional gender roles as they were in the 1960s ' and how men were the workers and women took a subordinate role. While this is the norm they are illustrating, it also shows how some women started pushing the envelope by taking positions of power and started changing the norms slowly. The show introduces the concept …show more content…
All of the men in the show are shown to be advertisement executives with the power to land high value accounts that determine what will be sold. These ideas of dominance over women and the idea that the role of a woman is one of caring and pleasing the men carry over to the advertisements they portray on the show. One of the advertisements portrayed on the show has to deal with brassieres and how according to the men who are coming up with the ideas, that the women want to be a nurturing and caring wife while also being a sexual being for their husbands. On a second occasion, an advertisement for lipstick, the men observe the women from behind a one-way glass and proceed to judge the women based on how they look and only pay attention to the ones they believe are pretty. The reason being, they consider that women only care about attracting a man 's attention. Women 's role in the work force as portrayed in the series, show women as only being there to please their bosses in any and every way possible. In one scene, a new secretary is being shown around by the office manager, the office manger explains all of the rules and what is to be expected and also describes the relationship between the bosses and the secretaries as one that borders between mother and waitress. There is also …show more content…
The show Mad Men focuses on the concept of traditional gender roles. In the series there are many examples in which men have a liberal role, while women have a confined and restricted role. The men also possess power and usually have a higher status. On the other hand, women are deemed to have no real power and are considered to be lesser beings. However, there are occasions in which women do take a dominate role, and push the extra mile. The idea of what are gender roles is a constant battle and evolves during time, either changing for the best or