Gender Representations- Reality vs. Expectations

In print media, audiences are constantly exposed to the expectations that women and men should meet. Whether this be that women are expected to be dressed in size 6 clothing, with large assets that are displayed all of the time, or that men are expected to have extremely toned bodies, with highly respected careers and lots of money, these expectations are slashed when you take a look inside the media and realise that these figures of men and women being created, are in fact just a fantasy.

It is important to note that it is not just the physical appearance of genders that expectations are created for. There are ideologies and beliefs about career, social status and personal background which all mould together to form the expectations that readers of magazine or audiences of films attempt to match. In the film Magic Mike, both genders are represented in a negative way. Michael Lane is a young man dreaming of owning his own furniture store but to pay his bills, he performs as a stripper. Typically, when a viewer may think of a strip club, woman performing is what would come to mind, so this film flips these stereotypes. However, the use of drugs and sexual encounter is evident in this film, and the ideology that men use women for sexual activity is shown. This not only represents men as controlling and selfish, but it represents women in a promiscuous and immoral manner. When in reality, in a discussion that we had in class, most female members stated that they would not partake in a strip club, highlighting that these views are expected of females because they are fed these images, but in reality this is not what they believe.

A positive representation of gender is evident in programs such as BBC1’s ‘Our Girl’, Molly Dawes a lower class, poor young female who decides there is nothing left for her in life other than to join the army. In magazines such as the below 2016 edition of ‘Elle’ magazine, the headlines are all surrounding the same topic of beauty and style, automatically creating the idea that women are obsessed with their beauty, but in this program, these stereotypes are subverted and women are shown to work hard and graft to be of an equal status to middle class women. It displays women are fearless and brave which again, is not an ideology that is frequently displayed.

Elle Magazine 2016

When it comes to the reality of what the majority of a gender are shown to be like, for example that the majority of women are not strippers and have respectable careers, these realisations can in fact be more surprising than the initial ‘expectation’.  I, personally, find it interesting because when you take a moment to step back and think about the people I know, all but a minority subvert the stereotypes created for them.