Teen Ink Article

Girl Stereotypes in Society - An Article
Teen Ink article.
Whoever constructed this article, congrats, I think you've nailed the media's stereotyping on the head. We as a consumer just lap up all the information we’re fed by the media and just expect our lives to miraculously turn out the same we see it play out on screen, in books and in the happy little tales we see in magazines, songs and opinion based blogs. When you see Miranda Kerr on a magazine cover you think ‘I wish I had a body like hers, I wish I looked like her’. The fact is not everyone can look like Victoria’s Secrets models and chances are we won’t even come close. That’s something we have to learn to accept and move on with our lives. We see people like Selena Gomez in the media and think ‘she’s about my age, why can’t I be as pretty and as successful and as famous as her?’ very rarely do we actually consider the fact that she actually had to work to get where she is today. As a 13 year old she auditioned for a TV show and admittedly not everyone gets that opportunity but not everyone would want it, however since then she has worked her butt off to achieve the results she has as a singer and actor, yes her appearance is well managed but with her success came money so she can afford to compose herself in a way that is accepted in Hollywood, but have you ever stopped to consider that maybe she’s also under the pressure of living up to her stereotype? That maybe she has to dress and act a certain way for publicity so she ‘fits in’? We don’t know nor will we ever know the real her so who are we to judge who she is and what she does?

As the article says, no one imagines the perfect girl as ‘overweight female with grey eyes and stringy, ugly, long, oily hair’but why not? everyone's different so why do we as onlookers expect everyone to be perfect? Looks are genetic and some people just end up with a finer bunch of DNA than others and that is really hard to realise for some people. I feel that our stereotypes change as we age, but how can our stereotype go from 'slutty, bitchy, conceited and rude' to being a loving mother? or a dedicated woman worker? The thing is we were never actually that stereotype as a teenage girls, not every single girl fits the stereotype and so this allows the stereotype to change over time as these girls age, if we fitted to that stereotype our entire lives then it would be the stereotype of women not just the stereotype of teenage girls. if everyone wanted to change the negative stereotype that teenage girls have, then they would spend more time trying to stay away from the stereotype as opposed to trying to fit in and be like it.

This article also made an interesting point about how woman are portrayed."Parents read to us Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty; they all were helpless at one point. Cinderella was treated badly by her family, Snow White lived alone and did all the chores and cooking, and Sleeping Beauty was just helpless gullible."

These are the stories parents are reading their infants, even without realising we're showing them the stereotype of girls and women, it is really hard to make stereotypes disappear; they've been around for thousands of years and they'll be around for thousands more. But it leads me to wonder how much the parents are to blame for allowing their children to fall into the stereotype down spiral  as naive as it may be they are in fact the instigators of allowing their children to want to live up the stereotype, it all depends on how much the parents let their kids control them; 'i want this, i want that', parents can give in just to shut the kid up, but i really don't think they understand fully what it is they're exposing their kids to. again though, the media is responsible for making the stereotypes so blatant that girls feel pressured into wanting to look like those girls on the tv screen or on magazines.

"Girls are taught very early to follow stereotypes. What dolls did girls play with? They all played with Barbie’s, which are skinny blond girls that all looked the same. Some girls played with Bratz, they accepted color into their dolls by having a lead African American doll but they had big boobs, and big lips, not to mention they are super skinny."

This is another way the media has slyly introduced stereotypes to younger girls. those young girls think 'why wouldn't you make the dolls realistic?' so instantaneously the bar and expectation level has already been set for these girls, if they're thinking about stereotypes at the age where they're still playing with dolls then they're more than likely to be influenced easily as they grow up into teenage girls without even realising why it is they want to be 'perfect'.
We always complain about how stereotypes are a bad thing and how it prevents people from being their true selves but we don't have to be that stereotypical girl, we just don't, so why is it we try so hard to be them? If we spent less time worrying about the stereotypes we're expected to be like we would be able to feel alot free-er. We'd be under alot less pressure and if stereotypes were completely removed then girls could be whoever it was they wanted to be without the worries of being judged by their peers.

Girlfriend Magazine

Girlfriend Magazine Website

I found the theme of the articles on this website had an overall trend; boys, appearance, and entertainment in the form of gossip surrounding celebrities, their appearance and their boyfriends. With all that sitting right in front of your face would you not fall victim to thinking that everything in that magazine is 100% truthful and the exact way we should be acting? As you get older you begin to realise how the media manipulates you into acting a certain way and you can make up your own decisions as whether or not you want to be a part of that 'hype'. But the younger, easily influenced population of teenage girls aren't able to comprehend that and so more often than not will believe everything that's fed to them. Even the girls that say 'that's stupid, I'm not like that, i don't want to be like that at all' deep down wonder if they're right, if they too should be like that and wonder why they don't want to be like that and why is our age group portrayed like that and theses questions spin around and around in their head until they slip into becoming like everyone else or going the completely opposite direction in a rather over the top way. Not only are girls worried about their appearance, their hairstyles,their clothes and makeup, but then there's the added pressure of 'the boyfriend'. At such a young age they're not mature enough to understand what a relationship really entails and they find themselves in relationships that end up too old for them. Then there's the pressure of the right boyfriend. Nowadays you cant just like a guy for his personality or the way he treats you, its all about his appearance because you have to be seen with him, he cant have too much of a history with anyone else etc etc and often for those girls who might not be as confident as their friends in these situations they find themselves having a boyfriend 'picked out' for them whether that's what or who they want. Another point to mention, in this magazine there was no issues for girls who might swing the other way; it focuses on girls and boys. This is just another example of the way the media portrays what it believes is right, clearly this magazine doesn't believe that being lesbian is right and so it wont have any relevant articles to this topic. for most girls that's fine but for a portion of the audience they're going through a confusing time and it would be beneficial for them to see that there's other people out there like them, that they don't have to hide who they are because its actually 'socially accetable' to be that way. the advice that the magazines give girls on boys is fabulous but we do need to start releasing that now there's more than one sexual preference and for teenage girls who don't have any clue how to deal with what they're going through i would think that some form of advice would be helpful for them.

Sh*t Girls Say

This article is off the Girlfriend Magazine website. It really interested me because I found it so realistic. It focuses on the things girls say about themselves and the author talks about the ways teen girls talk about themselves from a male’s perspective. this article brushes over the basics: I'm so fat, I can’t wear that, I shouldn't eat that, I should get a boob job and last but not least 'she looks better than me'. Seeing insight on these issues I realised just how much girls compare themselves to their peers and also the images of girls our age in the media and also how blind boys are to it. The reality of it is that girls are worried about their body image, they're worried about being judged and so often fall into the temptations of trying to be somebody they're not. We forget to realise sometimes that we are who we are; we can’t actually change what we look like just by wishing it to happen. In the article it outlined the aforementioned subheadings and briefly discussed what it is that guys have to say on the matter. We seem to have this overriding idea that guys, even our boyfriends or friends don’t like us for who we are, that we’re not skinny or pretty or fashionable enough for them when really the ‘decent guys’ will put your physical appearance at the bottom of their list. Because we as teenage girls think that boys are obsessed with our looks we fall victim to dressing and acting like sluts, it’s all too common now to see girls as young as 11/12 walking around in denim shorts with their butt cheeks hanging out the bottom, crop tops that expose their belly or low cut revealing singlet’s that expose theirs bras. This could possibly pass as a more acceptable fashion choice in summer at a beach but in the middle of winter in a town 200 kms from the nearest beach I don’t think so. By dressing this way the girls think they’re enticing boys and they are but not the sort of guys they’re gonna settle down into a relationship with, no. These are the sorts of boys that are in the game for their own personal benefits and they’re often players that care less about you than they could care about the latest fashion magazine. The other frustrating thing about today’s society is that the girls know that by dressing that way they’re going to attract that kind of attention from boys and they don’t care. They throw their morals down the drain just so that they can have someone telling them they’re pretty and special and perfect; whether the desperate little boy saying it is sincere or not. Girls get hurt so easily and a big part in the reason that happens is because they pretend. They dress like a whore when they’re not; they pretend that they’re dumb even if they’re smart; they pretend they don't care about what people think of them, they pretend they don’t care about anything when really all that they’re doing is begging silently for the attention of someone who cares enough to tell them to stop pretending. 
And i don’t mean to sound like a broken record but this is at the fault of the media. When you put a scantily clothed model with a gorgeous figure on the cover of a magazine that you know sells to young readers you know how easily they’re going to be influenced by that image alone. They’ll starve themselves to look like that and when it doesn't happen they'll get depressed. Like you just can’t win. You then go on  to read articles about happy women with the latest trends who lives are falling perfectly for them and the poor teenage girls just think their lives are shit in comparison. LIFE ISN'T THAT BAD.  Some girls do need to wake up and smell the roses. Yes there's people out there who live up to the media's stereotype and good on them, but are they happy? For some people they want a life of always trying to be the best, look the best, like what do you think the miss universe pageants are about? In the end the prettiest most ‘socially aware’ model will win. They’re models. They work for that body because they have to, if they weren't skinny and pretty they wouldn't be models because that’s what the stereotype says. So teenage girls need to stop trying to be older than they actually are. If you're 13, stop reading the sex articles in magazines, you can’t have sex legally until you’re 16 so why bother perfecting your techniques? You don’t need a boyfriend, he’s not a necessity nor is he a tool on your belt; think about it you’re probably using him anyways.
The article was brief, but i felt like it got the message across; why try and be something you're not?  Just because we see images in the media  of what we're 'supposed' to be like doesn't mean we cant be our own person. But i also felt that this article stereotyped us girls as well, like not everyone calls themselves fat, not everyone is completely insecure about their bodies and not everyone actually legitimately cares what other people think about them, they're content with their appearances and they don't have to try and pretend to be someone they're not. These are the people we as teenage girls should all aspire to be like because they are different, they're all unique because they are who they want to be not who others tell them to be.

looking at ordinary magazines that are aimed at girls between 10-18 there was a real variety of images and ideas portrayed through them. The magazines aimed at a younger audience were filled with advertising of clothes and make up, advice columns on how to deal with boys, friends and fashion, sending the young readers messages of how they 'should be' in these modern days.

'Be the girl who has it all!'
whats wrong with being the girl that doesn't? 
'Are you turning into the girlfriend from hell?' 

Girlfriend magazine is aimed at girls in their early teens 12-15, yet girls anywhere from the age of 8 or 9 are purchasing and reading these mags and its sending them mixed messages. should girls at the age of 8 or even 10/11 be worried about boyfriends, clothes,body image? The childhood of the young girls reading these magazines is being shortened as they're reading and trying to be like girls twice even 3 times their age. Taylor  Swift on the cover. shes 23, that's twice almost 3 times the age of the girls reading the content of this magazine. On the cover above she looks flawless: perfect skin, blue eyes, blonde hair,she has the stereotypical 'model look'. girls see this and want to be like her when in reality that cant happen, not everyone can be as flawless as the models on magazines, they're models for a reason, they didn't get there by being different or doing their own thing, they got there essentially because they had the right look, in TSwifts case the right sound and they went with the flow and now here they are setting the bar for anyone wanting to break into the industry.

Magazine content.
Dolly  is aimed at young teenage girls. 
sealed sex extra:everything a girls gotta know
Half of the audience reading this magazine wouldn't even be legal to have sex so why is this magazine implanting images and thoughts that its okay? 
The media uses images of girls as objects, combine with the all too obvious content other people read on the teenage magazines and it comes as no surprise that people, especially males expect us to be a certain way. Boys expect girls to want sex regardless of their age, and to be honest who wouldn't assume that girls are sex objects when the ideas being thrown around on a daily basis. The thing is that girls are beginning to live up to these expectations, to this stereotype and girls are losing their innocence younger and younger.

This cover of Marie Claire is a bit less conservative in the way the model dresses and also the content it advertises on the cover. Its supposedly aimed at a much older audience but also appeals to girls starting from the ages of around 13. The same with the cosmopolitan. The Cosmo filled with adult themed articles that aren't suitable for young easily impressible girls to be reading yet they do and so they're having ideas planted in their head that they may not even realise. The media really does need to become more aware of the audiences they're actually selling to, sure they will have a large audience of older women but their magazines also appeal to girls of a much younger age group and so the stereotypes they're portraying really are inappropriate for teenage girls as teenage girls will consciously or subconsciously always attempt to live up to the stereotype.

Taylor Swift Girlfriend Mag Cover: http://taylor-swift-love.blogspot.co.nz/2009/06/girlfriend-magazine.html

Marie Claire Mag Cover: http://nz.zinio.com/www/browse/issue.jsp?skuId=416195467

Dolly Mag Cover:  http://www.whosdatedwho.com

Cosmopolitan Cover: http://blogs.longwood.edu/kalex/2011/09/02/dont-tell-me-what-to-do/lady-gaga-cosmopolitan-magazine-april-1/

Emma Watson Girlfriend Cover: http://www.peachface.com.au/_blog/Organic-natural-skin-care-products/post/peachface_43;_Australian_Girlfriend_Magazine/ 

Mean Girls

Watching mean girls really over emphasizes the stereotype the media pins on teenage girls. the movie portrays us to be bitchy, conceited, worried only about our appearances and where we sit on the social hierarchy. The 'mean girls' on this movie sabotage and backstab each other; they care only for themselves. Is this a fair representation of the way teenage girls actually are? I'd say half and half. Girls are worried about their appearances and about what people think of them, that's only natural but movies like this make it seem like bagging on your own appearance and other peoples appearances is a normal thing to do. Although the focus of the movie was to show extreme examples of the typical teen stereotypes and to discourage girls from wanting to be like that, the movie somewhat gave the younger more 'easily influenced' teenage audience an idea on how they should be acting. The main character Regina George is your typical 'barbie doll, mean girl' main character. shes gorgeous and flawless to the naked eye but when you see her inner working she's bitchy and two faced but also incredibly insecure about her herself deep down as was shown in the mirror scene. shes used to getting what she wants when she wants. then theres her opposite Cady Herron. Cady is also flawless but to begin with she's much more confident in her appearance, its not that she's arrogant about the way she looks but shes just actually happy and unworried about what others think about her, she is what she is and shes happy with that. As the film progresses however her character evolves into a 'mean girl' and we can see just how easily it is to be influenced by your peers if youre naive enough or insecure enough to believe them instead of standing up for yourself and what you believe is right.

Mean Girls was written from the book "Queen Bees and Wannabe's" by Rosalind Wiseman and  the book shows insight to the way high school girls form their cliques and groups and ways to combat angry, aggressive teenage girls and the bullying that accompanies them. The aim from this film was to show teens what not to be like but it did send images to young teens of what the older teenage girls are supposedly like and this can potentially lead them to behaving like the characters in the movie, those girls are not good role models. Teenage girls raise the expectations of themselves and lower their expectations of others meaning they're ridiculously hard on themselves in regards to how they look, act and speak but allow others to treat them like rubbish as they don't expect as much of them. because they lower their expectations of others it often leads to girls surrounding themselves with people who have different morals and beliefs and this can lead to all sorts of peer pressure and bullying issues. from the outside looking in at the life of a teenage girl our appearances differ dependent on the age of the observer. for example young girls look at teenage girls in admiration  the 'older girls' to them are who theyre aspiring to be like and so they absorb every shred of information in regards to them and take it on board, often taking it too far and in the case of acting out stereotypes too literal. Teenage girls from the perspective of their parents generation see us as being rude, hormonal and temperamental but they also see the deeper more caring side that is what real teens are like. We can be obnoxious and conceited but deep down we're really sensitve girls that really just want to be loved. We see slithers of this reality in Mean Girls, like when the burn book is photocopied and spread all over the school, at first the girls are all really angry and fired up but in the end they realise that theyre just hurting inside at the fact someone actually thought those things about them, that they confirmed the fears they might be having about themselves. teenage girls just wanna be loved by their peers and they feel that to do that they must live up to the expectations the media lays down by using stereotypes, airbrushing of models in magazines and by never placing an 'unattractive' actor/singer/model anywhere within the public eye. 

Girls are so insecure and this is very well portrayed in the Mirror Scene in Mean Girls. 'The Plastics' all stand around a mirror and point out tiny details about themselves that they dont like. The supposed flaws they have are things like their hairline and their nail beds and since when has anyone ever insulted or complimented you on the size of your pores? This scene just shows us that even though these girls are 'THE' girls to be like at school, they still cant be happy with themselves. and Cady's line is something i could not agree with more, "I used to think there was only fat and skinny, but apparently there can be alot of things that can be wrong with your body." This totally sums up for me the reality of a teenage girls life, you cant be happy with yourself, people wont let you, but is it you that notices your imperfections or your peers? and why do you notice these and are they in fact imperfections at all? why cant we be content with our appearances? because the media is constantly forcing themselves down our throats telling us who we can and cant be. If tomorrow a movie was to be released that was about intelligent teenage girls who were fighting for a cause, something like world peace, would it get an audience? not in comparison to films that contain pretty girls, bitchiness and boys, there doesn't even have to be a moral to the story or a half decent plot because the majority of teenage girls will go watch it because it would have been advertised and waved in front of their faces by their friends and they think 'hey i have to go see that, i don't wanna be left out'. they get to the end of the movie and think it was terrible but their friend next to them thinks it was fabulous and so you just go along with the flow because if she says its good and the reviews said it was good then im just wrong and i should keep my opinion to myself. and it works both ways, if that same group of girls had gone to see the world peace movie the majority would say it was terrible because thats how much the media has influenced the way we think and they we respond to things that actually matter, we cant care because if we did thats 'just not cool.'

This scene was well constructed and was visually appropriate and educating to watch. As each girl identified her flaws she was shown from the mirrors point of view in a single shot mid-close up. Every time they said something they disliked about themselves you could look for it on them, and not once did you see it. You didn’t see that weird hairline or the huge pores, the man shoulders or the weird calves you only saw one stereotypically perfect girl staring back at you and you wonder how on earth she can find anything wrong with that perfect image she has. Playing in the background is a song that is clearly ‘popular’ at that time and we’re told that. This allows the audience to see that the plastics clearly know ‘what’s up’ with the modern tastes. Their costuming is similar to what we see them wearing everyday at school and at this point in the film we still see Cady in her pink polo acting as naive as ever when she mentions her bad breath, something the plastics don’t seem to consider a legitimate flaw. But the main focus of this particular scene is the dialogue which is where the stereotype of these ‘teenage girls’ is confirmed. As they continue going on and on about their bad points we see that they’re only saying these things to bring themselves down as there’s nothing much else wrong with them.

Image from:https://www.facebook.com/meangirls‎ 

Stereotypes Of 'The Teenage Girl' In The Media

A stereotype is a label put on a certain group of people that imply's how that group looks and acts. Stereotypes often prevent people from being who they want to be because people around them assume they have to be a certain way and often those being stereotyped feel pressured into behaving like their stereotype says they should and so they cant express themselves freely and openly. Take for example a teenage girl; there is so many images shown by the media on the stereotypical teen girl. she should be skinny and pretty, have the latest clothes in fashion and a cute boyfriend to match. she needs to be sociable, a real people person and outwardly confident about her appearance. How many girls can actually be this girl? not many and often those girls who try so hard to be 'that girl' often end up as bitchy egotistical girls who think they're better than everyone else. All this stereotype does is make real teenage girls insecure about themselves. I thought the picture on the right showed this. girls can be confident but that makes then conceited,they can be bitchy and yet insecure, lazy yet ambitious, there's so many different combinations of characteristics and personalities so why should we all try and be the same?
Populations are stereotyped through their appearances and their actions. People stereotype because its easy. its easy to see blonde and assume they're dumb, its easy to see a black person and assume they're unintelligent and that they commit crimes, easy to see someone in glasses and think nerd, someone with a tattoo and think bogan. and yes i'm stereotyping right there but those are common stereotypes that are found in everyday life, especially throughout the media. The media uses stereotypes for the same reasons we do but they also use them because they know that audiences stereotype, they cant help it, so it allows them to spend less time explaining things and more time just expressing opinions when people have subconsciously already made judgments. Movies are classic examples of the way media uses and abuses stereotypes. They can put a blonde on screen make her do one dumb thing and shes instantly stereotyped and you know what role she'll take in that movie, its the same with any of the other sterotypes that are common in the cinemas.

Image from
http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/2012/05/weight-stereotyping-the-secret-way-people-are-judging-you-based-on-your-body-glamour-june-2012