“On television and radio, in print media and on billboards, the consumable life, the buyable fantasy, continually bombards us. Even if we tend to resist a particular message or promise, everywhere the general message is repeated, inescapable”. (Ewen, p.93)

The above passage taken from Stuart Ewen’s chapter entitled Advertising and the Development of Consumer Society suggests that advertising is a powerful medium that is often inescapable. Advertising plays a significant role in society as it surrounds people everywhere they go. People are constantly bombarded with images and these images have contributed to getting people to spend their money.

To some degree, advertising has the potential to be manipulative. From a personal standpoint, i think that my thoughts and feelings have been shaped and strongly influenced by images portrayed in beauty advertisements. I can say that these representations have encouraged my thoughts regarding how an ideal female/male body should look like. I have constructed many of these representations with the help of the many advertisements i’ve been exposed to on television, in magazines, on billboards and on the Internet. Many advertisements result in getting people to believe that there is a hope for a better life. They succeed in getting people to believe that if they eat a certain cereal they will lose weight, or if they use a special moisturizer they won’t get wrinkles.

Over the past semester, I have come to realize that it is practically impossible to escape this powerful medium of advertising. Often without people realizing it, several things are being promoted to them at a given moment.

As a future teacher, one of my goals will be to help my students be less susceptible to believing everything in the media. In order for my students to grow up to be well-informed consumers, I plan on teaching them how to effectively analyze advertisements.


This is a good link to an article concerning how media's representation of men can affect their esteem: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27595678/

Gender

“Many wonder how much the media influence the choices we make about our lifestyles and physical appearance, and to what extent media representations help to shape our perceptions of ourselves and others”. (Duncan, p.82)

When examining the media, we are faced with countless gender representations. It is important to note that these are representations and constructions, rather than an accurate depiction of reality. Reading the above passage in Barry Duncan’s article entitled Seeing Ourselves: Media and Representation provoked me to take a moment for self reflection. I began to critically examine my lifestyle and think about how I perceive myself and the kind of person I strive and yearn to be. Over the course of my lifetime, It has become clear to me that gender is a key concern when discussing representation in the media.

When hearing the word ‘boy’ and ‘girl’, we often think of characteristics which we believe to be suitable for each gender. Dolls are for girls while toy cars and train sets are for boys. To most people, it seems that this statement is accurate and perfectly normal. Often times, the media reinforces these generalizations. Masculinity and femininity are two concepts made up of stereotypes. The stereotypes for each gender differ tremendously and are promoted and advertised on the media. On television, men are typically portrayed as being more assertive than women. Commercials advertising cleaning merchandise always include a female pitching the product. On sitcoms, women are generally the ones associated with domesticity. These are examples of just some of the most common gender representations that can be seen on television, magazines and in newspapers. It is clear that the media plays a significant part in shaping people’s views on what types of behaviors and characteristics deem appropriate for each gender respectively.

I believe that it is important that people do not use gender as a basic group to categorize individuals. Everyone has their own unique identity and people should not just assume characteristics upon people on the sole basis of gender.

Representations of ethnic minorities in the media

   In recent years, a shadow has been cast on the entire Islamic population, the  Muslim community has been subjected to intense scrutiny and have been characterized as immoral and subhuman.They have been taunted and humiliated, Western society has blamed the Islamic people for virtually all acts of terror without full-credibility, sure they have been responsible for some acts of terrorism and violence, but not all Muslims should be held accountable.   

     The media plays a considerable role in shaping our beliefs. It plays a central role in both generating and influencing our conceptions. Professor Shirley Steinberg has remarked that, “Media- based representations shape our consciousness about social groups, sometimes in very subtle ways”(Steinberg, 2004). I am in accordance with this statement, in regards to the Islamic minority.

    

A major factor which contributes to Islamic stereotyping in the West is due to the media's ignorance of selecting their words that describe Muslims. Some common names heard or seen in the news about Muslims are "extremists" or "terrorist". These words are misleading and are mainly anti-Islamic.  The media rarely uses more neutral terms. 

 Below i will include films that represent how Muslims are stereotyped in film and the second depicts why we might have a negative assumption about Muslim individuals. 

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