After reading many different children's books and doing a project, I have realized just how many gender stereotypes there are in them. These fairy tales tell little girls that beauty is valued other all charactereistics in our society. They tell young boys that they must be brave, handsome, courageous, never afraid, and always strong. These are unrealistic ideas and these stories put tremendous pressure on children to meet these expectations. However, these books and stories are continuously published, bought, and passed on from generation to generation. This tells a lot about our society. Often times people judge by what they see and do not bother to look much further than that. This could come from the ideas which we were all exposed to as children early on in life. Are we born looking at the world this way, or do these stories and the media really have that much of an impact on our lives?
I think it is important as parents and teachers to have discussions with young children when they watch or read these stories to help them understand that these stereotypes and traits are not what they should hold most important in their lives.
I completely agree with your idea that media today places unrealistic images of what people should be like in children's minds. Majority of all movies end up with the male role saving the day and ending up with the girl. If you were asked to name ten movies in which this happens, you could do it easily; however, if you were asked to name ten movies that had an alternate ending it would be much more difficult because movies like that are not common anymore. Even the Disney Princesses portray this image to young girls that they have to be beautiful and that they need a man in their life to be happy. All the Disney Princesses end up either engaged or married by the end of the movie. Could this possibly be contributing to the increasing number of young marriages that end in divorce?
ReplyDeleteI think it is important for parents and educators to inform their children/students that these are just stories and in most cases they are unrealistic and exaggerated. Why is it that we have never seen a full figured female as a lead role in a Disney movie? Anyone who is not stick thin generally plays the "bad guy", which is sending the wrong message to children. I recently watched a video for my TE 250 class about the message that Disney movies are sending to children and I actually enjoyed it. I've included the website at the bottom of this comment. I know it is 50 minutes long, but it is actually entertaining and makes you think!
https://angel.msu.edu/section/content/default.asp?WCI=pgDisplay&WCU=CRSCNT&ENTRY_ID=5AF73B9D1A5C43D6A8812B8C993311D2