'What men do, women can do just as well'. A qualitative interview study about the role gender-stereotyping in the media plays in the perception and creation of gender by late adolescents

Late adolescents are large consumers of media content, in which men and women are generally portrayed in a stereotypical manner. Previous research has so far been unclear about how these adolescents give meaning to these images, and how they influence their perception as well as creation of gender. In this interview study we found that late adolescents are considerably more progressive than the media images they consume, they feel that gender portrayal in the media is unrealistic, unfair, old-fashioned and restrictive. Nevertheless, in their own creation of gender on their social media platforms they articulate and create gender in a highly stereotypical way. We can therefore conclude that while they might dislike and disavow stereotyped gender portrayals in 'traditional' media, they have internalized these 'idealized' images to such an extent that they do perform them in their own gender creation on social media.