ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes Playboy cartoons to see whether and how they illustrate and contribute to male entitlement. Cartoons may seem an innocuous and even silly type of media, but cartoons carry influence and portray cultural attitudes. Cartoons serve as “terse statements of human foibles” that “integrate society’s members into a collective understanding of social situations”. Researchers have long studied how the representation of gender in advertisements, films, and television helps reinforce cultural and social attitudes about gender. Gender-based differences were also found in the amount of clothing worn by men and women in the cartoons. Patriarchy—male control of the power and leadership roles in a society—trickles down into individual men, creating in some of them attitudes of male entitlement, jealousy, and possessiveness; these attitudes offer justification for sexual aggression and violence. Media help form cultural attitudes and help produce an ideology of hegemonic masculinity.
