Heterosexism, Gender Roles and Society

Heterosexism, Gender Roles and Society

 

What concepts do you get from the above image? Which one do society perceive as a normal family? The concept of sexuality is often shaped and reinforced by society, men and women are given gender roles and this is what society wants us to think. How often do you see two females with a child in an advertisement together and being consider as a normal family? Let's take a look at some examples later on this post.

Source: William Leonard

Let's talk more about the concept of heterosexism. Last week, we've come across with the concept of The Wedding Cake Model during the lecture given by the director of GLHV Mr. William Leonard. The model is basically about heterosexism. The cake is constructed with a base (sex) which includes only male and female, on the second level is gender which represents by femininity and masculinity. On top of it, heterosexism represents the one and only sexuality. However, you can see the model completely ignores other genders.

What are gender roles? From a post by Cathy Busha, gender roles, women are portrayed with long hair, flowy white dresses, surrounded by flowers, brimming with nurturing instincts. Men, on the other hand, are described as bumbling, strong, masculine providers.


This comes back to our first image, that only a family with a female and a male (shown on the left) is considered as norm. We come across with this concept more than we thought of. You see it from the advertisements all the time that can shape our perceptions of what's normal and what's not. I am going to show you some print advertisements and TV commercial and prove to you how advertising plays an important role in this issue.

 

In this Tiffany & Co. commercial, heterosexism is reinforced at least a few times. All the couples in this commercial are heterosexual. Also, the commercial plays with femininity and masculinity. 

For example, how women should behave and look. They should have pretty long hair, they should wear make up and jewellery. Being happy, dreamy and bubbly all the time. We can also see her life through the video. A woman normally falls in love with a straight man. Then they get married and have kids. After she get married, she goes to different social meeting with her husband, take care of the kids. It seems to me her life only consist of her kids, husband and the diamonds but nothing like careers or personal life.

Another print advertisement from Calvin Klein Eternity also reinforced heterosexual relationship and marriage by putting one man and one woman together with their kids on the bed (possibly). All of them are smiling that implies they have a lovely family and having a good time. Eternity also means timelessness, same with the Tiffany & Co. commercial that talks about being forever. 

On one hand, heterosexuality is reinforced in society through media and advertising. On the other hand, homosexuality rarely appears on advertising, even when they do, it's not the most romantic story like those we see in the Tiffany & Co. and Calvin Klein Ads. Take a look at this print advertisement.

 

You can see from the advertisement, lesbians are portrayed as sexual and a bit violence which makes people outside of the community thinks all lesbians behave like this. This is a complete stereotype of lesbians as if they are exotic all the time and may affect the way other people treat them or view them in society. That also brings us back to the topic of "The male gaze" that the advertisement is showing things a man would like to see instead of what a lesbian couple do.   

I believe if we want people to stick to their sexualities without getting discriminated, not only we have to do something to accept and respect everyone have choice. The media should stop reinforcing femininity and masculinity, so everyone can be free to be who they are and not getting "brainwashed" to be correct. 

What is gender?

Simply cannot wait to get into the details of this course. Even there is no required reading for first week, I still have something prepared to talk about, I will first express my views about gender.

What is gender and what is sex? According to WHO, "Sex" refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women. That means if your genetic makeup is XX or XY. (Not being totally ignorant, I do recognize there are XXY, XYY and other combinations as well) While the meaning of gender is so much different. "Gender" on the other hand refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women. That is when we are talking about if someone is feminine or masculine, this is related to gender.

I would like to start talking about a topic called gender advertising. I think some of you may come across with this topic before and it is super interesting to look at it.
Let's take a look at the two commercials by NIKE featuring the two tennis stars:

Maria Sharapova
 

and Roger Federer

What do you find out? Both of them are tennis stars, professional athletes but they are perceived so differently in the commercials. In Sharapova's video, it emphasizes on her beauty, along with the theme song "I feel pretty" This is as an intertextual element referencing to the 1961 movie West Side Story , the song was sang by Maria in the movie. Again, Maria in West Side Story is very feminine. Only towards the very end of the commercial, Sharapova hits the tennis once.

How about in Federer's commercial? Federer is being very confident, active and showing off his tennis skills in the commercial. It shows that he is a strong athlete. The above commercials reinforces the gender roles of female and male perceive in commercials. Female continues to be more passive and concern most about their beauty while male take the challenge and be active.


Sorry for the long entry, I would still like to talk about more before finishing this week. Some of you may have heard of Jean Kilbourne, a feminist author, speaker who is internationally recognized for her work on the image of women in advertising. One of her series called Killing Us Softly

 

She tells us about how advertising can shape our perceptions of females and males. Also on how to be a perfect woman, being thin, pretty, sexy and passive. And we cannot escape from advertising, since advertising is everywhere and it has a great impact on us all. What do you think about this? Do you think you can avoid advertising in daily life?

I have some extra links for you to look at if you are interested in gender advertising:

• Erving Goffman & Gender Advertisements 
• Gender Ads 

Hope you all enjoy my first post, please let me know your thoughts so I can improve over time!

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog everyone! My name is Jen, an exchange student at La Trobe University. I am currently doing a subject called Gender and Sexuality. Starting from this week, I will post something new and related to the issues of gender and sexuality each week. The posts may come with some hyperlinks, references and case studies. Also, there will be a complete different topic for each week. Feel free to share your thoughts and leave me a comment down below (about the topic or the blog). I will need a lot of comments to make this blog better and easier to read! Thank you everyone.