The most common use of stereotypes seen in the media and advertising are of women, men, select sexual orientations and race. These large social groups tend to be condensed into a few generalized traits instead of showing diversity of individuals within the group.

Stereotypes are powerful because they can affect our expectations of what men in our society should or should not be like. We start to look at television and movies for our role models and base our opinions of others off of people who don’t truly exist in our world.

Racial stereotypes and racial profiling share the same basic concept of a misrepresentation or negative view of a certain person based solely on their race. This misrepresentation of race in media can lead to a sense of justified racism.