Feminism

To what extent do you agree with Judith Butler's theory that gender roles are socially constructed? Use examples from the media in your response.

Judith Butler argues in her theory that gender roles are socially constructed rather than it being biological and that feminists are wrong to divide the society into men and women as they accidently reinforce the idea of differences between the two genders. Personally, I agree with this. In my opinion certain things within the society push to reinforce the two genders apart without anyone even acknowledging it.

The media is one of the main influences that reinforce this and also influence our behaviour in terms of gender roles. For instance when watching advertisements they always show gender separations and make each individual advertisement for each gender when advertising toys for children. For instance for the young female audiences they show other female children playing with toys such as Barbie’s and dressing up toys etc. Also for male gender of children they show young male children playing with action toys and engineering games and make these children believe from a young age that these are the sort of games that they should get and it makes the children want to buy these games as they see on the advertisement it is being playing with by someone they can relate to making them want it more. These subliminally make the viewer’s believe that even for their children that there should be gender separations  so that boys should grow up to do engineering and manual work, whereas females  should go on to do hairdressing etc.

Also the media not only engages with the younger viewers but it also influences gender role separation to older viewers. For instance with the movie ‘Sweet home Alabama’ the protagonist is stereotyped as a typical American blonde which relates to the theory of Butler as they show this representation of female. She is then shown as a successful woman who leaves her marriage to become an independent working woman in New York which she has males working for her and calling her “boss”, which goes against the typical stereotype of women not being more successful than males.

 Later the protagonist then becomes engaged to a really successful New Yorker but later goes back to her first marriage and choses love over her job, this reinforces the idea that women cannot have both and that they will eventually would want their relationships rather than their careers and highlights that typical damsel female that wants romance over anything.