This is exactly what the movie, Mean Girls, does. It focuses on certain aspects of teens’ lives and overdramatizes them to add humor and to show the negative effects of certain behavior. Through the clicks, girl drama, raging parties, and many sex scenes, Mean Girls fits perfectly into the teen comedy mold. While Mean Girls addresses many cultural ideologies, central to the movie, one that is overplayed is the female stereotype. Mean Girls attempts to critique the typical female stereotype by using the plastics to over exaggerate the glamour and happiness that comes from being popular.
Pipher argues that the wrath and destruction of the societal hurricane has always been focused on girls rather than boys, as girls experience the “short end of the stick” in terms of the sexual double standard. In the beginning of each school year at my high school, rumors would swirl about the new kid who just joined our class. Some of the rumors were positive and some of them were negative, but most of the rumors were about their sexual history. When the rumors were negative, it was always about a female student. I saw girls ridiculed and disrespected by our peers.
Also in today’s unclear world with the ever increasing amount of divorce and conflict within marriages a screwball comedy would have a hard time getting wide appeal and a success. Today’s culture is so used to explicit sex that innuendo and true romance couldn’t generate enough revenue to work in today’s market. The Lady Eve adheres to the Hollywood style in regards to character type for this genre of film. As I had mentioned earlier in the essay the characters clearly are set in their roles shown not only socially but sexually. Jean the key representative of the lower class shows through her sexual antagonism of Hopsie, that she like the lower class wields the real power when it comes to real world situations.
Sustained by the decade’s prosperity, young people threw wild parties, drank illegal liquor, and danced new, sexually suggestive steps at jazz clubs. A strong fear of death, which was something real and unpredictable, prompted attitudes of impatience and carelessness. This was true for women and men. One of the symbols of this revolution was the flapper, a term that describes a "new breed" of young Western women who flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior. Flappers were looked down on for wearing excessive makeup, drinking, treating sex in a casual manner, smoking, driving automobiles and otherwise flouting social and sexual norms.
Some common causes for “date rape” include miscommunication between the male and the female, drug or alcohol abuse and peer pressure. In our culture, men are taught to view women as sex objects and they usually do not take women seriously. These men often feel that women do not really mean what they say. If a woman states that she is not ready to participate in having sexual intercourse, some men take this to mean that she is playing “hard to get”. He has the impression that she really wants to have sex, but she is afraid of ruining her reputation.
The many celebrities like Miley Cyrus and magazines who all try to portray their idea of a woman, alter and distort their perception of womanhood. These girls wear overtly sexual and suggestive clothing and opening act promiscuously in their interactions, forced to go through extreme diets, wear large amounts of make-up and even modify their bodies through surgeries all due to the cumulative pressures of friends, family and their developed self-confidence issues to become this counterfeit ideal. These girls wear uncomfortable heels, constricting clothing and skimpy outfits to hyper sexualize themselves. This is what they believe it takes to become fun, sexy and a desirable woman in today’ society. They go out, drink, “grind” and “twerk” (different forms of highly sexual dancing), and hook up with random guys.
When we see the TV commercials and the ads in them, always see the products for male gender, as a woman as an object to call the attention of the genre. In fact, 57% of rock music videos portray women as a sex object, a victim, as unintelligent, or in a condescending way. (Confidence Coalition). Orbach’s state “ The media present a woman either in a sexual context or within the family ” (Orbach 203) what we mean is that the stereotype of women, causes it to be used in only two ways, and one of them is like an object. This is why singers like Jennifer Hudson, after achieving success, try to conform to a stereotype labeled by
The constant exposure to these beauty-oriented advertisements can have a very negative influence on adolescent girls, causing them to become self-conscious of their bodies and to obsess over their physical appearance. This obsession has led many women to become so insecure with themselves that it can lead to many unhealthy practices, with society and the media being the ones to blame. There are many damaging health effects that the media can have on adolescent girls; those
Whereas the negative images of women are running rampid in today's media with music videos showing girls in bikinis flirting with guys and lyrics emphasizing sex. This oversexualization of women is causing women and young girls not to value their bodies and base their self worth on their looks and sexual appeal. "A recent study found that girls as young as six years old wanted to be like dolls who were dressed in a sexy way compared to dolls who were dressed stylishly, but covered up. These young girls associated being sexy with being the way they wanted to look, being popular in school, and who they wanted to play with.One study found that about one-third of the clothes for girls sold had "sexualizing characteristics." Interestingly, most of these clothes also had age-appropriate elements, perhaps obscuring the sexual side of the designs."
They have made bad decisions in their life and they are getting publicity out of it. Is this really the type of thing that you want your child to be looking up at? Seeing these popular movies, television and teen icons influences us to think that it is cool to be pregnant at a young age. The media is influencing us too much, we follow whatever the "trend" is and we don't think for ourselves. Casual naked people dancing around, thin and built models, and teen pregnancy is subconsciously affecting us to think all of this is okay.