The advancement in communication technology has created myriad online media sources through which people from different cultural backgrounds meet more frequently and easily than ever before. In this highly interconnected world, intercultural sensitivity has been the utmost important quality for global citizenship. Empirical literature on how gender norms operate across countries in the realm of a global circulation of media contents is limited. This study examines how young American individuals perceived masculinity embodied through Korean pop male band members’ bodies. Survey data suggest that U.S. cultural norms played a significant role in research participants’ ( N = 772) perception of Korean band members’ masculinity. Respondents perceived them neither highly masculine nor feminine. Such ambiguous gender images are similar to the stereotypes of Asian American males in the United States. Moreover, respondents’ perception of and evaluation of band members’ masculinity largely conform to what the concept of hegemonic masculinity suggests as ideal. Findings imply that participants construct the difference between Korean pop band members’ masculinity and the Western hegemonic masculinity ideal, and subsequently reproduce cultural distance.

Femininity is learned from a myriad of social agents and institutions. An avid consumer of media, today's pre-adolescent girl, or "tween," is inundated with messages about how to be a socially acceptable female. What is the nature of these messages tweens are receiving about femininity? Are tween girls in today's society encouraged to adhere to traditional notions of femininity or are they encouraged to resist these norms? To answer these questions, I performed a content analysis of all advertisements found in Girls' Life, a magazine whose target audience is the tween girl. Textual and pictorial coding took place for all advertisements in all issues for the years 2007 and 2008. Results revealed the presence of conflicting messages about femininity through the emergence of four themes: female togetherness, focus on appearance, independence, and control. The magazine presents a contradictory version of femininity, one that encourages the adherence to normative prescriptions of femininity while simultaneously encouraging resistance to these norms.

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The dominant culture portrayal of work and family in the United States classifies women as either mothers or paid workers, and suggests that women cannot participate in both institutions successfully because both require full dedication and commitment to role responsibilities. Despite these ideals, however, most women engage in both paid work and motherhood. Today's working mother may therefore seek guidance from cultural texts while attempting to balance multiple roles. Product advertisements have long been studied as one such cultural text. In this study we examine advertisements in Working Mother magazine from 2011 to 2013. While we find thatWorking Mother Advertisements advocate for a boundary between paid work and motherhood, advertisements also hint that motherhood and paid work are intertwined roles. The notions that mothering and paid work are confined to separate spaces or can be bounded are false and readers of this magazine may clue into this subtle message. Getting past the notion of a boundary between paid work and motherhood is critical if our goal is to move cultural debates about paid work &motherhood forward in countries such as the United States.