Men's Portrayal in Contemporary Media (Free Essay Sample)

In the duration of the existence of humans in the modern era, there has been a defined societal norm of what it means to be a man or woman. What does that mean? From the moment a human is born, they are indoctrinated on the basis of their gender. Whether it be the toys we get as children or what influence our parents have, there is an effort to mold people into a gender that has been constructed by society and that is deeply ingrained in the overall psyche of human beings in general. The worst part of this deep perspective is realizing that men have been a major part of this. To clarify, the problem is how we raise men. A huge factor in this is the media, especially advertisements. Ads with a focus on men depict males as “dominant” resulting in a stigma of toughness that prevents them from sharing emotions and being as vulnerable or recessive with their peers. This is especially problematic as it has been known to lead to violent tendencies and staggering statistics concerning male suicides. Jennifer Newsom is the chief creative officer of The Representation Project, which challenges sexism and shifting norms through media. In the documentary, The Mask We Live in, Jennifer Newsom analyzes media portrayal of men and how that has culturally affected men's behavior. Advertisements should not continue to push male dominance, resulting in less violence and better communication.

For example, in 2009, the apparel giant Nike released an ad that advertised a “Men vs Women” challenge. It displays bright colors that consist of purple, teal, pink and yellow. The overall background image inserts a model wearing all Nike apparel, who seems to be running with wireless headphones. The aforementioned colors also shine their lighting onto the man and highlight him as the subject of the advertisement. Overlaying all of that, the subtext suggests that men are dominant in sports by stating “One More Thing For Men To Rule”. This suggestion can be a complication as it motivates unhealthy competition based on gender.

The ad is meant to induce the target audience into a sense of competition. The problem with this ad is that it plays on the notion that men are better than women in a ratio that trumps women. It doesn’t matter if it is true or false, but it engages men to be in a sort of “gender war”. The ad divides the audience and forcefully puts them into groups to encourage competition to sell their products. It also furthers the teaching that men should dominate everything. “If you're going to be a man in this world, you better learn how to dominate and control people and circumstances."( Newsom, 1:07:54). Newsom shows the ingrained curriculum in some men with a single sentence, it furthers the credibility of her stance and shows how flawed the thinking of these men is by establishing such bias.

The result of embedding dominant type ideas in men can result in violence and the need to control any situation. Furthermore, in order to keep this male dominant persona, men tend to not share their feelings with their friends or family. The idea is, that if a man has no problems mentally and he can keep up the appearance of having a non-problematic posture, he will be ranked higher on the social hierarchy. This ultimately brings more instances of depression in men as it is “unmanly” to share feelings with others. “I felt so down and depressed to the point of contemplating suicide many times.”(Newsom, 27:04). If we want to solve the problem of rising suicide rates in men, it is necessary to address toxic masculinity. 

In another example, we can see an ad trying to sell a Toyota Fortuner. In the background are a few mountains and on the left of the separated image, we see a burly but clean-looking man staring off to the side. It shows the outdoors because that is associated with men. We can insinuate this because the man in the ad is set in the outdoors, near some forest as the background is full of trees. The subtext states “Toyota Fortuner…Made For Men”. For some context, Toyota ran this ad in Egypt to get more of their customer base interested in their new SUV. It excludes women in the background as adding any femininity might drive away the intended customer base, which is men.

This advertisement is trying to bring the Alpha Male persona from men, while also excluding women from the scope of the intended audience. It is insinuating that only men need to drive it because men do not have much of a chance to bring out their manliness when in reality, the product being advertised is just like any other SUV in Egypt. This ad also implies that the men who are supposedly going to buy this SUV are going to look like the one in the ad, it doesn’t cover men who are skinnier or different skin color or who might not even like the outdoors and are buying the SUV because their surroundings are tough to traverse.

This is problematic also because it is enforcing the mindset of the “Alpha male” and that furthers the problem because being the Alpha male is not conducive to living a peaceful life. The alpha male mindset also shuns anything good that is considered feminine, such as being gentle, empathetic, and having some sensitivity towards other people. The Alpha male mindset can not only hurt men themselves but can hurt their peers, including the children that they raise. For example, “stop with the emotions. If you're going to be a man in this world, you better learn how to dominate and control people.”( Newsom, 0:00). The author of the documentary decided to add this quote because it shows how some men can raise their children to be tough. This resulted in Joe Ehrmann, the author of this quote, to hide his emotions in football trying to gain validation from his father. It further shows how men who are raised with the alpha male mindset can go on to have conflicting relationships with their fathers. The documentary gives another example of a man who was raised as an Alpha Male and conveyed his story about how he let go of his athletic roots to pursue what he really wanted, which was theater. “One of the characters that I played was a transgender character. I remember when my parents came to the show, um... and my dad was really uncomfortable.”(Jennifer Newsom, 1:17:02). This shows how once he did something he loved that was a little bit feminine, his dad disapproved. It goes to show how expressing yourself is a threat to the alpha male persona and how it can keep you miserable.

All of this portrays how men in contemporary media are represented wrongfully, as many of the advertisements out there are centered around the perfect alpha male. This can have a negative effect on society as a whole as it can hurt men by removing their ability to share emotions and hurt women and children by the resulting mess of the tendencies of alpha males. Solutions to this problem can be to call out companies on their behavior concerning the romanticization of dominance in ads targeted toward men. There has already been a lot of change in the U.S about how we advertise, but the rest of the world needs to learn to get their footing to create change.