Overview of gender/race/class

  Before I took this class, I had a very narrow viewpoint of gender, race, class and sexual orientation in the media.  I thought that there was no representation of these things in media except for incorrect portrayals that were influenced by the society.  The media seems to have influenced a white male dominated society. Below are images depicting models from Abercrombie and Finch.

 http://www.abercrombie.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Casting?catalogId=10901&storeId=10051&langId=-1
 

  As you can see, all of these models have things in common.  They are all white, rarely is there a model with dark skin in this company’s advertisements.  The men depicted in these images are very masculine, and seem as if they want to be dominant.  The females in the ads, however, seem as if they are weak and vulnerable.  Given what we know about hegemony, it would seem as if that is what society wants us to think.  

  Hegemony is described as a group in society that has dominance over others.  Given that media tends to depict dominant dominate white men, it might be safe to say that heterosexual, white men are what is expected to be the dominate group. Shows that aired in the 50’s are a good example of this.

 

  “Leave it to Beaver” was a very good example of a show that had a “perfect family.”  The children were well behaved, and the mother was a housewife.  The father was a white man that brought home the money for the family.  He was also the one to give orders to the members of his family, and discipline the children when necessary.  Society wanted the public to think that this was the way that all families should be.  As such, shows like this were very common in society.  They wanted everyone to have a family that was run by a male, and these families were expected to be white.

  I view that all of the above information is terrible.  Men of a specific race are expected to be the dominant group.  This is immoral because men are not always the dominant ones.  There have been plenty of examples of women filling the role of the dominant figure.  If society continues to hold this to be ideal then men will always be thought of as dominant.