Impact of media on gender socialization in society

Watch movie Sex •Watch movie Sex City COLLECT ANALYSIS ? 1-2 pages (250-500 words) analysis. Answer research hypothesis: What impact media gender socialization society?

Use sociological terms text chapters chapter 3 socialization chapter 9 Inequalities Gender Age.

Gender and the City: Setting Expectations through Popular Film

The film Sex and the City is an example of popular culture taking aim at its impressionable female fans, socializing them to believe that being a woman means being consumerist, romance-starved, and accepting of second-class status. The two primary dramatic storylines feature female protagonists who must decide whether to forgive a man who has mistreated them. In both instances, the man wins out, and viewers are left with the message that these women, for all their independent posturing, live lives subject to the whims of their significant others.

The viewer is told that "women come to New York for the two L's: labels and love" (Sex and the City). They do not come to better their careers (though each of these women appear to have successful work lives) or achieve anything else. Consequently two of the female protagonists struggle with an issue with a significant other, where romantic questions are foregrounded: Will Carrie get married? Will Miranda forgive Steve? Though the film attempts a feminist agenda, as when Samantha proclaims, "The good ones screw you, the bad ones screw you, and the rest don't know how to screw you," the ending undermines any work toward that goal (Sex and the City). Both Carrie and Miranda are betrayed by their partners and return to those same partners by the film's end.

Conflict perspective is evident in the film's patriarchal values, as women and men struggle for power, but men ultimately triumph. Carrie begins as an independent writer, living happily in her own apartment, possessing a boyfriend she loves. By mid-film, she has given up her apartment and been dumped at the altar, only to reunite with Big at the climax. They then get married on his terms, not the ceremony that she created in a place (the library) which was significant to her. Carrie blames herself for the failure of the relationship ("I let the wedding get bigger than Big") and explains away her return to him ("It wasn't logic, it was love") (Sex and the City). She gives up her autonomy and thus he wins in the power struggle between them.