Hope Sandusky/ editor-in-chief
In recent years, a giant light has been shed on the stereotypes and horrible representation of women in the media and advertising. While this issue is a serious matter, there seems to be one group of people whose media treatment has been just as horrid, but we have chosen to sweep it cleanly under the rug.
Men. That’s right, men.
When you look at how men are presented in the media, through advertising, TV shows and movies, they fall under the same basic archetypes as women.
We first have the fraternity jock, the meathead with no ambitions or goals other than how big his muscles can get or how many women he can woo through his charm.
There’s the workaholic father, the absentee man who seems to work around the clock, out of sight and out of mind other than the mention from the present mother saying, “Your father is working late.”
We have the single guy who, while charming and mildly good-looking, is inept and has a depraved sense of humor and doesn’t seem to have a source of direction but somehow managed to graduate college and has a somewhat stable job.
The single guy turns into the married guy, which is basically the same characteristics of the single guy except now he has a ring and children but still no sense of how to live life without making a fool of himself.
We have the action hero, the soldier, the big-shot man with all the cars and money … the list goes on.
Why have these stereotypes prevailed over the years? Just like women, the majority of men are nowhere close to falling under these cast types. Why do we make men to be so inept, so ridiculous and so over-the-top and not see it as an issue?
We’ve fallen under the belief that since men don’t express themselves as loudly or strongly as women, they don’t deserve the same kind of reaction when it comes to fighting stereotypes. But just because men aren’t forming protests or signing petitions or tweeting about it, that doesn’t make the issue less important.
The only way media portrayal will ever get better for anyone is if we stop making allowances for certain groups because we see ours as more important.
