How does the Popular Culture Stereotype You?

How does the Popular Culture Stereotype You?

Introduction

Popular culture, also known as pop culture, is a set practices and beliefs that are dominant in a society at a given period of time. Culture changes from generation to generation with each generation exhibiting a different culture from the former. Pop culture also includes the feelings produced by the people as a result of interactions with the practices and beliefs. This implies that the culture one is born to will greatly influence the way one thinks and performs day to day tasks.

The areas that pop culture exhibits major influence include entertainment, sports, news, politics, fashion, technology and slang or language. These trends are propelled by social media and by seeing the way other people are living, one feels the need for an upgrade in lifestyle in order to keep up with the trends. For instance, in fashion, earlier like in the 19^th century there was a dictated dressing code for each gender where men and women had different dressing modes. This is quite different from the 21^st century where everyone has their own sense of style and there are numerous dressing codes to fit one’s style regardless of the gender.

A stereotype is a person who generally forms an idea about other people depending on the group they come from rather than their individual characteristics. Pop culture can easily transform people into stereotypes. Social media has transformed the world to a global village where people see and learn how others live just by a click of a button. It is easy to form an idea of how that entire community lives just by observing a few members of that community. For instance, when you ask a random person about the life of artists mostly musicians, they will tell you that they live flashy lives full of drama. This is true based on the musicians on the limelight. However, this is not correct because there are some musicians who do not have flashy lives and are very low-key. This is a stereotypic person because they have described all musicians based on the traits of the whole group rather than their individual personalities. The goal of this paper is to show how popular culture can influence a person’s mode of thinking making them a stereotype.

One of the most evident stereotype is how a woman is supposed to look and behave. Popular culture has set guidelines even for small girls. They no longer behave how children used to behave earlier. Normally, children are supposed to be imaginative and curious of the environment around them but now they follow set trends and have become uninterested in the world. Hanes observes that girls from the age of 3 to 6 worry that they are fat. This is mostly as a result of some movies glorify slender women as beautiful; this is an issue a child that young is not supposed to worry about.  (1). Also, young girls are too conscious of what they were and want to look “sexy” according to the set trends (Hanes 2). This stereotypic trend that a beautiful woman must be slender and skimpily dressed has misled many children.

Another stereotypic pop culture trend is that of beauty pageants. This has taught children from an early stage that their main value is looks. They uphold this belief even when they grow up. These premature sexuality looks are exploitative to such young children. They are made to look like adults and are trained on how to behave as adults making them miss out on their childhood (Hollandsworth 4). This trend does not outgrow the children and when they grow up, their main focus is on their looks. The feeling of insecurity over one’s body has made many teenage girls starve themselves in order to have the right body size. A country that once believed that “big was beautiful” and “bigger was more beautiful” had transformed to a place where size began to matter (Goodman 1). This made becoming thin a requirement for one to look beautiful. A study conducted in a rural community in Western Fiji reveals that 3 years after television was first broadcasted in this area, adolescent girls started controlling body weight in the urge to look like the ladies on television (Becker 1).

However, not all pop culture is negative. Exposure to other people’s way of life has influenced some people to upgrade their lives. For instance, girls are much broader than they were centuries ago. Women are taking on political positions that were taken by men only previously. Also, they are holding managerial positions in big companies contrary to before. Girls no longer feel that there is anything they must not do or cannot do because they’re female (Hanes 5).

In conclusion, popular culture has programmed the way people think about various things. It has opened up both positive and negative trends of living. It is upon a person to choose whether to be defined by the standards of pop culture or not.