This document summarizes key points about gender representation in media from a chapter. It discusses how a gendered lens is needed to analyze media critically. All forms of media should be analyzed as they all influence understandings of gender. Economic and institutional forces shape media messages. Media influences social norms around gender by providing models of masculinity and femininity. While beauty standards are imposed on all women, the specific standards vary between cultures. Media content focuses on topics like violence, sex, and minority stereotypes which can influence behaviors. The male gaze constructs passive female and active male roles. However, gender is a social construct that is always changing.

1. Gender Communication in
Social Institutions
Chapter 11 - Media
Alex Dulac
CMS498
December 9th, 2013

2. Gendered Lens
● A gendered lens must be present if audiences are to
create oppositional readings of mass media.
● “Even though people could view media in different
ways, they tend to produce similar readings, and these
similarities reveal things about identity, gender
identity included” (pg. 241)

3. All for one and one for all
● All forms of media are equally
eligible for analysis. Focusing
on one media is inadequate.
○
○
All media communicate
understandings of gender and
gender influences all forms
of mediated communication.
Gender representations
found in one medium can
respond to gender
representations in another.

4. Issues with Media Studies
● Relevancy of topics in media with
changing times
● “Inescapable levels of contradiction”
● Impressive range of scholarship regarding
gender in media (wide variety of forms
and content)

5. Economics
●
●
●
Economic processes and
institutional patterns govern
media messages.
Advertisments remind us the
importance of money in media.
Shows featuring well-to-do
families with ample spending
money and fashion industry
oriented shows increase
consumer demand for
commodities.

6. Power
●
●
“Media forms always influence
social norms concerning
gender...for they provide models
of what it is to be feminine or
masculine” (pg. 238).
Computer generated images and
idealization, i.e. Christian Dior
ad edits / female perfection
creation in Lara Croft.

7. Hegemony
●
●
Maintained, repeated, reinforced,
and modified power through media
that shape the cognitive structures
through which people perceive and
evaluate social reality.
“The vast majority of (television)
characters tend to abide to
traditional gender/sex expectations”
(pg. 239). Women may act
masculine, but still meet feminine
standards of attractiveness. Men may
act feminine, but still meet
masculine standards of
attractiveness.

8. Interlocking Institutions
● What sets media apart from the other institutions discussed in the
text, is that it encompasses all of them under one umbrella.
○ Work, family, education, and religion can be and are all
represented through media.
● “Media messages of gender both constrain and enable, modeling
for people often-unobtainable ideals of attractiveness while also
expanding people’s limited understandings of their locations in
the world (pg. 241).

9. Differences among women
●
●
“Although all women may be held to beauty standards, the standard is
not the same for all women” (pg. 242).
These standards depend on many factors, most notably race, nationality
and culture. What one culture defines and showcases through media as
‘beauty’ will not be the same as in another culture.

10. Similarities between women and men
● Body image is a huge personal pressure fueled by
the media, and the expectations are targeted at
people of that sex.
● “The ideal of extreme thinness is most prominent
in magazines targeting women...the ideal male
body marketed to men is more muscular than the
ideal male body marketed to women” (pg. 243)

12. Many people, especially those who are
younger, compare themselves to
airbrushed models, provided a false sense
of desire.

13. Media Content and Effects
The three most focused on topics in media effects are that of:
● Media Violence
○ If someone kills a man’s family, his solution is to kill them even more
violently.
● Sexual Content
● Minority Stereotyping
Advertisements tell children what they want to play with. Seeing another boy
play with Nerf Guns or another girl taking care of a toy baby helps make their
decision in not only what to play with, but who to act. (Violent vs. gentle)

14. The Gaze
● The Gaze is a theory explaining that cinema not only highlights
woman’s to-be-looked-at-ness but actually builds the way woman
is to be looked at into the film itself.
● Cinema is from a white male’s perspective.
● “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.”
● Reinforcement that the male is active and the woman is passive.
● Opposing stances include the possibility multiple gazes (not just
from a White Male) can exist, and that white-male-gaze
rejections can in fact be found in all types of films, even
mainstream Hollywood films.

15. Gender is Constructed
And thus there is always a flux. Men’s magazine GQ can
also be interpreted as telling men to be insecure and
confused in the modern world, rather than being a heman-ness magazine. It is argued by Gauntlett that it used
to be known was a man was, and a lifestyle guidemagazine was not necessary. But amidst the feminist
critique of traditional masculinity, and that fact that
gender roles can and do change, a proper publication
helping men be men in today’s world was desired.

17. Conclusion
Media use in our society is unavoidable. The danger is not
in the media use, but in the use of it uncritically. Pursuing
active and dynamic practice in media use will provide
insightful views that normally would go underlooked.
Taking charge in media use will take charge in media
digestion. You are what you eat, and you are what you
think.