Essay on Women In Roles On Television

Free Women In Roles On Television papers

San Francisco State College Strike
In the meantime at San Francisco State College, students in the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), a coalition of African-American, Latino, and Asian-American student groups, began demanding reforms that addressed the concerns of students of color and the surrounding community. After more than a y

Anti-Trust Case Against Microsoft
A battle is raging in the United States Courts with the Microsoft Corporation. The federal government maintains that Microsoft's monopolistic practices are harmful to United States citizens creating higher prices and potentially downgrading software quality and should be stopped while Microsoft and

Women in Roles on Television

The quality of American television has become a national disgrace. Young women in America who are displeased with their appearance more likely then not can trace those feelings directly back to images from the mass media on television. The unrealistic representations of women that the mass media bombards young women with indicates that the television has become a source for a distorted understanding of gender roles among adolescent women. These images warp young women’s views of their own gender identity. The mass media on television should in an attempt to provide more positive gender identities for adolescent women depict women on television in more realistic ways, should stop reinforcing negative stereotypes of women, and stop portraying women as sex objects in advertising.

Television is unrepresentative of the real world. Since most major directors on television are males, they depict a world, which agrees with their concepts of society on television. Young women see women in roles on television as being submissive to men or as not as intelligent as men are. For example, the case of the female mayor on the comedy shows South Park. She went to Princeton, yet she makes moronic decisions for the town and flagrantly poses for photos. The mass media should show positive roles that young women could identify with and imitate positive behavior from strong female role models. Television besieges women with portrayals of old women fearing the youth of young women. The result of these images is that these ideas create competition among women and divides women. The mass media ought to be aware of the images of women depicted since young women in other countries also see the American television. In developing countries television ownership is rising and as much as seventy one percent of television programming is from more affluent countries (Wolf 80).

Equally important would be to stop reinforcing negative stereotypes of women on television. Television still represents traditional views of society. Women are often still generally represented as inferior to men on television. Television shows have to stop representing women as being neurotic like Monica on Friends, or difficult and bossy like Amanda on Melrose Place, or ditsy like Phoebe on Friends. Women should be represented as more than the standard stereotypical negative and simplified character viewers generally see.

Television allows people to see more and choose what they want to be. Women need to be shown in occupations that are not the stereotypical, such as the occupations...