Media Stereotypes

After watching the Reel Bad Arabs video, I learned that Arabians have been stereotyped as bad people for a very long time. Even children movie like Aladdin also use that stereotype. I also learned that media has a really really strong influence to our mind. We often easily believe to what media says to us without searching the real truth.

According to our lecture, stereotype is the application of one (usually negative) characteristic to a whole group. Stereotypes are labels that categorize people largely in negative terms, and that

can be applied to whole social or cultural groups. Media uses stereotypes to give audiences a quick, common understanding of a person or group of people usually relating to their class, ethnicity or race, gender, sexual orientation, social role or occupation. According to http://www.media-awareness.ca, stereotypes can be problematic They can:

• reduce a wide range of differences in people to simplistic categorizations
  
  
• transform assumptions about particular groups of people into "realities"
  
  
• be used to justify the position of those in power
  
  
• perpetuate social prejudice and inequality
  

More often than not, the groups being stereotyped have little to say about how they are represented.

Other than the Reel Bad Arabs video, there are so many stereotypes in media. The most seen is on video games when male characters are more likely to be heroes and main characters with big muscles, great power and lots of abilities. While the female characters are more often to be shown as sexy and wear revealing clothing,

Besides video games, almost every teen movie i have watched also portrayed many stereotyping, like the popular girls in the high school always have a great body, captain of the cheerleader team, dating a cute boy that is a quarter back, and usually very reach and have blonde hair but have no brains. While the nerds are always wearing thick glasses, greasy hairdo, old school clothing, and wear braces.

A lot of women are very depressed because they don't look like girls in TV and magazines. Beautiful woman always portrayed as skinny, big breast, sexy, perfect skin, tall, and so on. That is not real definition of beautiful!! What about inner beauty? What about loving our self, appreciating what we have, because we are unique and beautiful in our own way. Don't believe that you're not beautiful because media said so.

As a Muslim, we always labeled as a bad stereotype. I have one bad experience when i went to Germany with my family. That day, we went to supermarket, and one of my aunt wears hijab, since we got in to that supermarket, one of the employee was already suspicious to my aunt, she spied her every moves, until we got to the cashier, she asked my aunt to take off her hijab and she said that my aunt has stolen things and put them inside her hijab. We were shocked by her statement and of course my aunt won't take of her hijab. Luckily my father can speak German and he spoke nicely to her and explain. Finally it was settled and we can leave peacefully. See? It was one of example of stereotype, we, muslim, always looks bad in white people's eyes. I also heard that it is hard for people who has Arabian names to get visa to go to America. Why? Because, Arabian names mean Muslims, and Muslims mean terrorist!! Sometime when i think about it, it really hurtful that something I believe in can be bad in other people's eye.

So, what can we do? I suggest that don't just swallow everything that media feed you. Be open minded, be smart, be critical. Star discussing it with your friends, parents, teachers. And the most important thing is show them that their stereotype is not always right. Show that nerds can also be popular, pretty doesn't always mean sexy, and the superheroes doesn't always have big muscles!