Journal 2: Stereotype

What is stereotype? Stereotype is used to catergorize a group of people.

People don't understand that type of person, so they put them into classifications,

thinking that everyone who is that needs to be like that, or anyone who acts like their

classifications is one. For example stereotypes for African Americans, are that they

are good at basketball, love to eat fried chicken and watermelon, and loves drinking

grape soda. This advertisement above depicts a strong stereotyping of women. This

picture shows a women being stereotyped as a gender that only cooks, clean and feed

the family while men are the ones who is the one doing the hard work like working

and making money to support the family. This is during the 1950s; it’s a time well

before the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s, when sexism was not only tolerated, it

was expected and actively encouraged, partly through mysogenistic print ads like the

ones we explore below. Luckily with lashings of hindsight, we’re now able to see the

funny side of the ridiculously overt sexism on display throughout the ads of the

1950s, mainly because they now seem so incredibly dated. The statement one the ad

says that “ The chef does everything but cook – that’s what wives are for ”. This is

offesive to women and it categorizes all women in a way that they seem girly and

dainty and they are suppose to be taken care rather than they taking care of people.

Stereotyping people has it’s pros and cons, for example the pros are it helps us

organize and remember information about other people easier and the cons are it leads

us to make assumptions about other people when we know very little about them. But

in my opinion, I feel that stereotyping is not a good thing if you have very little

information on an individual. This is to prevent hurting and also offending people

when you don’t even mean to.

Name : Tan Kah Jun

ID Number : 0320119

Course Code : 30203

Title : Individual Journal (Stereotypes)