ARTS ANALYSIS

Gender Stereotype Visual Examples & Analysis

Gender Stereotype Visual Examples & Analysis

Introduction

Fashion print media have intrigued researchers for decades. On the one hand, they enclose visual images of gender stereotypes that are associated with the broadly held sets of cultural beliefs regarding the typical characteristics of genders from different social groups within the society. This indicates that fashion print media's content analysis allow viewers to observe or assess stereotyping in such visual representations. For instance, in popular fashion magazines the advertisement of beauty products are mostly highlights gender role stereotypes as a means to deliver the desirability of a good or service to the reader or viewer by implying a relation between the product and a typical young female of obvious beauty.

On the other hand, some believe that it is significant to assess fashion magazine visual representations of female gender due to its impossible standards they symbolize and the potentially negative psychological and physical consequences (Millard & Grant, 2006, n.d). Thus, visual images representing gender stereotypes are under debate since past few years. This essay illustrates visual examples of gender stereotypes in relation with theories of gender like performativity and masquerade; how artists and designers use visual images to subvert the gender stereotyping.

Discussion

A number of artists and designers encourage, promote, and challenge the gender stereotyping through visual culture constructs representations. There is a range of visual examples that illustrates and critically presents the idea of gender as a cultural 'performance' such as Barbie or other gender objects like stiletto and the suit (Boyd, 2010, p.1). Some visual examples that represent such gender stereotypes that have designed or drawn by artists and designers to challenge the fixed gendered ideals are analyzed below.

Claude Cahun's Visual Example

Claude Cahun use dress and dressing up to challenge rigid gender binaries creating more fluid ambiguous trans-gendered identities, as shown by the visual image given below.

(Source: Fiona, 2012, n.d)

The portrait of Claude Cahun given above is not revealing her persona or identity. This picture represents a jacketed man and his reflections that appear to be masculine. The gaze of a person could imply different sentiments such as they may hint a suggestive longing or sexual undertone with a noticeably feminine nuance (Fionna, 2012, n.d). The visual representation of Claude Cahun is almost a theater of sexuality as she represents a different gender. This visual image is a dissolving of distinctions in which she could avoid being simply defined by her gender, and thereby, also make a mockery of gender stereotype. Though some may view it as the mixing of genders as a part of homosexual Bourgeois trend that often crept in Surrealist work.

In the above image, Cahun represents an emerging figures of the 'mannish lesbian' as well as 'male dandy' in which the characteristics of a particular gender are not fixed. She meets the judgmental look of the viewer head on in her image, emphasizing her individuality or liberality and not just a simple ...