Abstract

This thesis investigates how children's gender identities can be constructed and developed by television programs and advertisements. Gender is being defined and taught through the marketing of toys and by the gender stereotypes presented through them. This thesis researches the impact of television on children. Some of my findings are consistent with the literature on television and children which I reviewed: that commercial television, in general, has a negative impact on children; that girls are more willing to play with boys' toys than boys are to play with girls' toys; and that both programs and commercials tend to target specifically either boys or girls, and both are presented as bi-polar stereotypes. In general I found that the commercial television world socializes children not into the broader gender identities option of postmodernity but into traditional binary sex roles: pink and blue, Barbie and Spiderman, beauty and strength, inside domestic or outside work, Venus and Mars; and children and parents seem content