The reasons why stereotypes exist are usually because when people make up characters (for TV scripts, film scripts, etc) it’s easier to use the image of a woman that someone is familiar with, like a mother or beautiful girlfriend. However by stereotyping these women to suit the image the writers have in their heads they are therefore demeaning them. Would you feel happy if others perceived your mother or girlfriend as brainless?
Have you viewed the advert for McCain’s chips? At first, when I saw the advertisement I thought the women in it wasn’t stereotypical, as she was not cooking the meal, the man was. But after a while I saw that this was just for a joke, as at the end you saw that the man was only able to cook a tray of oven chips and he doesn’t even know whether they have a chip pan or not, as the dialogue goes: -
Man- I spent ages making these chips, slicing the potatoes, frying them in the Chip pan.
Woman- what chip pan?
This example indicates to me that if we look at the message being portrayed in another way it should be the man we think of as brainless.
When I watched the TV to find some more examples of stereotypes I tuned in to Challenge TV and a game show was being aired. The female presenter on the show had long curly blonde hair, and a shirt with half the buttons not done up showing off her bra, and a contestant who also had blonde hair, had big boobs, and was wearing a low cut top and was referred to by the other host as “sexy Zoe”. Although I am a male and clearly appreciated the image on the screen, I looked at it in another way and was able to see the blonde bimbo picture, especially when they proceeded to giggle their way through any questions they answered wrongly.
Bimbo stereotypes aren’t just limited to television. They’re in the newspapers too. The sun newspaper described tennis ace Anna Kournikova as “sexy Anna”. When she was knocked out of Wimbledon they wrote “what a loss, with her fabulous figure”. It seems clear to me that they represented her as a sex object to look at instead of commenting on her playing ability. The blonde bimbo image is frequent in the media and has gone right back to the days of Marilyn Monroe.
The uses of stereotypes are varied as well. Sometimes the stereotype is used for a joke, like in the advertisement I mentioned for chips, however we should seriously look at the people who are brainwashed into believing this type of advertising as being the real joke.
When will our views change completely? I think, although new stereotypes are appearing and old ones are evolving, it will take time – if ever.!
