Gender Norms

I feel as if the media has the most impact on forming our gender norms. We are constantly bombarded by the media on how we should act, dress, eat and sleep. All Americans interact with the media in some way shape or form every day of their lives. This influences our expectations of men and women. Currently the media views women as submissive and hypersensitive while they view men as dominant and insensitive. In my opinion the media is trying to hold back women from gaining true equality. I think in our country is afraid of letting women get too much power. Our country has never had a woman president mainly because of the media. When Hillary Clinton was running for the primaries, she was portrayed as a heartless bitch. Men feared her because they thought she would emasculate them. Having such strict gender norms can be problematic because not everybody fits these norms. When someone does not fit these norms they become an outcast. Gender norms are ultimately created to keep the people that are in power protected. Gender norms also create generalizations on how a specific gender should act. This helps form stereotypes and causes turbulence between the genders. I feel like the media has a big impact on high divorce rates because divorce is perceived as something very easily done and it is greatly accepted in our society. But the main reason the divorce rates are at arise because of the gender roles our media forces on us.