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Superwoman - A Hard Act to Follow
 
By ScienceDaily
Apr. 18, 2011                                                                                                Issue 621    

 

Summary of this article
 
This article is about research that shows both men and women change their perceptions about what is a good heroine role model after watching a movie. And women's expectations of other women (and probably themselves) shift the most. Unless we can find a clearer picture of what a "true" woman is, then we will be forever chasing false expectations and ending up disappointed and resentful.

Jim   

Superwoman - A Hard Act to Follow

 

ScienceDaily (Mar. 31, 2011)

 

Exposure to attractive, aggressive, female leads in films affects how men and women think about who women ought to be in the real world.

 

Women in particular have high standards for other women and expect them to be both stereotypically feminine and masculine i.e. beautiful and aggressive rather than beautiful and passive.

 

That's according to new research by Laramie Taylor and Tiffany Setters, from the University of California, Davis in the US, published online in Springer's Sex Roles journal.

 

Taylor and Setters' work looks at the impact of media representations of film stars on gender role expectations for women - or those behaviors and attitudes expected of, or held as standard for, women in general.

 

In their experiment, 122 male and female college undergraduates, from a large university on the US West Coast, were shown a film clip of a major Hollywood motion picture, featuring a female protagonist who was either stereotypically attractive or not; and physically aggressive or not.

 

The results showed that students perceived the more attractive film leads as better role models than the less attractive leads. Students who watched the violent, attractive protagonist endorsed feminine gender role expectations significantly more than those who viewed the violent, less stereotypically attractive lead.

 

In addition, participants who viewed the attractive, aggressive lead also endorsed more stereotypically masculine gender role expectations for women.

 

This suggests that:

 

  * Both men and women expect women to fulfill both feminine and masculine roles

  * That women generally tend to have higher expectations of women than men

  * That watching attractive, aggressive heroines exaggerates these expectations.

 

Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider was the stereotypically attractive, aggressive protagonist and Kathy Bates in Primary Colors was less attractive but also aggressive. The non-violent clips where the protagonist was passive and submissive were from Changeling (Jolie) and Fried Green Tomatoes (Bates).

 

The students then completed a questionnaire to assess their gender role expectations for women. For example, they were asked whether the female character portrayed in the clip was a good role model for women.

 

According to Taylor and Setters, "Exposure to attractive, aggressive, female characters actually increases expectations on women, including potentially inconsistent roles. After viewing, women are expected to be both more independent and ambitious and more socially connected and nurturing. These increased expectations for women occur not only among men, but among women as well, suggesting that women's expectations for themselves are affected."

 

___________________________________________________

 

God bless your family and your marriage.

 

Jim Stephens

 
 
    

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The Marriage Library
 20101010