Girls Life, Boys Life, and Media Stereotypes
Friday, November 18, 2016
Being a teen can be hard. We have to balance our social lives, sports, and extracurricular activities along with the stress of school and homework. On top of all of this, there’s college and career planning: We have to think about our future—what we might want to do as an adult and how to get there. Do I want to be a doctor, teacher, musician, or politician? What are the different fields that I could go into? Will I have to go to college?
All of these questions are very relevant in our daily lives as we navigate the challenges of being a teen. Surrounded by social media, we often look to the media for inspiration and guidance about what we want to do in the future. While this can be helpful, gender stereotypes alter the way that females and males receive this advice.
Back-to-school covers of the magazines Girls’ Life and Boys’ Life clearly show the stereotypical divide between males and females in today’s society. The August/September 2016 Girls’ Life cover advertises stories like “Your dream hair,” Style secrets,” “Wake up pretty,” “Fall fashion you’ll love,” and “Confessions; My first kiss,” whereas the Boys’ Life cover highlights careers for boys: “Explore your future: Astronaut? Artist? Firefighter? Chef? Here’s how to be what you want to be.” The shocking difference in themes of the covers highlights the difficulties that girls face when turning to media for help with what we want to do in the future.
We are already considered “underdogs” in a workforce where gender bias persists, and magazines thinking that all we care about is fashion, gossip, and how to be pretty could not only be more than wrong, but it makes it that much harder for us to figure out possible careers. We are looking ahead, past any high school drama. Unfortunately, much of society does not realize that teen girls could be just as or even more interested than boys in exploring our futures. Luckily, though, organizations like Career Girls understand our struggle.
Within just a few clicks, the Career Girls website can help guide girls explore their future and learn “how to be what you want to be.” Personally, I put down the magazines, and instead browse this website, always finding a new and unique career I never knew existed. While society may not realize it yet, girls are just as curious as boys about exploring their future as an astronaut, artist, firefighter, or chef. Career Girls is the perfect place to start looking into different careers, free from any stereotypes!
Career Girls is excited to welcome Ann as a blog contributer for the upcoming year. We ask all of our crew to share their top five favorite Career Girls videos. Be sure to take a look at Ann's picks here.