The purpose of this research is to examine the stereotyped images of women in the media. The plan of the research will be to set forth the sociocultural context in which women appear to be portrayed in stereotyped manner in television commercials and magazine advertisements, and then to discuss how these stereotyped images affect women in society. In particular, the effect on women's self-esteem or self-image will be explored. As well, the effect of such images on the life experience of women will be examined, in particular as regards their lives in the work force. Reference will also be made to the legal and regulatory aspects of the portrayal of women in the media.
In the age of the more or less institutionalized constituency of women's liberation, it is almost a tautology to deplore the negative, discriminatory, or contemptuous portrayals of women by the mass media. In the background of complaints that women are stereotyped in television commercials or in magazine ads is the overarching complaint that society has limited the scope of social roles that women typically play. For what one must begin with in any analysis of the commercial depiction of these roles is an acknowledgment that, in real life, women as a group do not have the same options, power, control, or wealth that men as a group do have. If women's social roles were as settled and as option-filled as those of men, the contemporary palaver about negative portrayals would be little more than a historical curiosity. Which is another way of saying that when, in real life, women do achieve social and economic parity with men, the social roles will perforce change, and be reflected in the media, accordingly.
That said, one must add that the hard reality of women's stereotypical images as reflected in the mass commercial media is that they can be seen as profoundly unreal relative to world reality. The weight of evidence is on the side of the view that some im...