ABSTRACT
We are bombarded by media sights and sounds daily. We are subjected to music, news, and advertising sitting at our office desks, standing in elevators, and jogging or driving to and from school or work. Advertisements crop up at virtually every site we encounter-from usual ads on billboards and subways, to those on uncontrollable computer pop-ups, shopping carts, channel guides, online search screens, and video games. They shout out the newest, best, most modern, most dazzling, and most efficient products and services necessary for daily existence. Film and niche television allow for every conceivable programming taste. With the advent of extraordinary, but now convenient technology, we can choose our entertainment specialties in any location. As documented in Chapter 3, gender socialization occurs via multiple agents. Parents provide the earliest source, but television becomes another potent socializer when children are as young as 3. We rely more and more on the mass media, especially television, to filter the enormous amount of information we receive. This filtering process has a major impact on our ideas about gender. Indeed, one of the most documented, consistent findings is that for both males and females and in all age and racial categories, heavy use of entertainment media, especially heavy televisionviewing, is strongly associated with adherence to traditional and stereotyped views about gender.
