Gender Stereotypes in The USA

Gender stereotypes arise because the psychological characteristics corresponding to behaviors are generalized to the sex typically performing them, and these characteristics are viewed as stable, intrinsic attributes of each sex. Specifically, to the extent that women are concentrated in domestic work and communally demanding employment, people believe that they are warm, caring, and socially skilled (Williams & Best, 1990). To the extent that men are concentrated in strength-intensive roles and in high-status roles, people believe that they are assertive, forceful, and dominant (Ridgeway, 2011; Williams & Best, 1990).

The film ‘Cake’ is set in present-day Karachi where the film rotates around a dysfunctional family of five; Zareen (Aamina Sheik), the middle child who has left her dreams to deal with her folks, their farmlands and essentially everything else around the house, Zara (Sanam Saeed), the youngest one who has been living in UK for a long time and the oldest, Zain (Faris Khalid), who lives in New York with his significant other, a child and their folks (Mohammad Ahmed and Beo Rana Zafar). The family reunites after the parents' wellbeing begins weakening. Following their get-together, circumstances emerge where the family is constrained to go up against each other and manage their grievances, laments, feelings of resentment, insider facts, bliss and everything else in the middle. The film has recently the appropriate measure of mind and amusingness, adjusted by the perfect measure of disaster. At its center, "Cake" is a film about the progression of time seen through the eyes of one family and offers a sincere take a gander at the substances of life, of at various times, of decisions and results.

In Patricia Collins(1999) book ‘Black Feminist thought’ she talks about the Mammy image which typically portrayed Black women as obedient, faithful domestic servants basically saying that they were only good for house work and taking care of children. With this picture Black women keep on enduring this since society still observe's the lady as somebody will's identity dedicated and would just think about the family unit and kids. The following controlling image that was clarified was the Matriarch image as the Black woman playing the man's part inside the family unit instead of being a nurturing lady that she should be. This identifies with intersectional types of abuse that Black women keep on enduring in light of the fact that Black women today need to play both mother and father to their youngsters since most fathers are truant in their kids' lives, and Black women will probably be the ones with fruitful vocations that will enable them to be the principle supplier for the family rather than the Black man. In regard to the film Zareen, the eldest daughter is both the ‘Mammy’ and the ‘Matriarch’ since she takes care of her parents and their house domestically, as well as looking after their lands from where they earn their living. Zareen has both roles as a son and and daughter and as a caretaker of the home and their work.

As for Zara she is portrayed as the Black lady as explained by Patricia Collins is the educated Black woman who has given up family life in exchange for a career. Zara lives in the UK and works spending rarely less time in Pakistan with her family. Little is known about her love life but she lies to her parents about it, she tells them she is still living with her supposedly partner but there is none.

Both Zara and Zareen are created as controlling images so they audience would know how to view or treat them as. They would treat Zara as a workaholic not knowing how to live in relationships thus men should stay away from her. While Zareen being the ‘Matriarch’ and ‘Mammy’ has an emasculate personality where she goes to their lands to work and has a fatherly role as well as domestic role where she takes care of her parents. In one scene where Zara takes Zareen to a New Years party, Zareen feels uncomfortable and wanted to go home even thou she was with her peers, because she wanted to be at home with her parents. Which shows she was so used to being domesticized that she didn’t want to do anything with that party but fulfill her role as a ‘Mammy’. Cake had broken these stereotypes in a way that Zareen would work in her father’s Sindhi lands while Zara was away from home in the UK independent and would work.

People with firm gender role views are more likely to have traditional traits than people who are more adaptable to these gender roles. The gender roles consist of women being the ‘Caretakers’ while the men are the ‘Breadwinners’ because of entity scholars' more prominent dependence on generalizations to sort and decipher social information. Cake broke this stereotype of a man being a bread winner by having Romeo a male character taking care of Zara and Zareen’s parents and doing household chores, while Zara and Zareen worked thus breaking the gender role of a woman.

Zara and Zareen’s brother Zain is married to a woman named Sana, unlike male gender stereotype he listens to his wife and adheres to her wishes. This may be the cause of emotional vulnerability may be particularly important within the context of romantic relationships because people want to maintain the relationship, have their needs met, and avoid being hurt by their partners.

Gender roles arise from expectations of the society and their preconceived notions, where a male is dominant and orders around his female counterpart and is in control of her, while the female is submissive and takes care of the children and household. In the case of ‘Cake’ Zain does not order around his female counterpart instead his counterpart does that to him. While Romeo is also more domesticized the opposite of the male patriarchal values since he takes care of the parents, cooks, cleans and basically is around the house, more so his personality is more humble , meek and down to earth opposite to a stereotypes arrogant dominant man.