Ocutare, Sheena C.

Ed Ling 206 October 14, 2017

Ideologies
Ideologies are ideas and beliefs that guide and organize the social and cultural
elements of the superstructure (Althusser, 1980). These are beliefs that control the
people in their lives. Ideology is less an illusion that is vulnerable to truth than a set of
practices and ideas that are produced within social institutions such as the church,
media, and the school. In this sense, ideology doesn’t involve conscious thought and
false knowledge about the social world. There various examples of ideologies in
different aspects. Some of the examples are: gender ideology and media ideology.
Gender ideology is concerned with the attitudes of men and women on their
place in society, their rights and responsibilities. This is a very common ideology in our
society before and even knows. Men are treated as superior and should do the difficult
tasks. They are given more opportunities for we have the ideology that they can do
better than most women. Whereas, women are characterized as weak and should
consider doing easy tasks that are appropriate to their abilities. But in our time today,
this ideology is starting to change as women of today are treated equally with men.
Same opportunities are given to both male and female especially when we talk about
job. But, in a certain society, we can’t please everybody. There are still people who
discriminate women because they think women can’t do the tasks that they want to do.
Through time, women have already proved in the society that they can be better than
what people think.
Another ideology is media. Media is a carrier of ideology because it reaches out
to a large audience. Media reflect certain values or ideologies though sometimes we
may not be aware of this as we see it as acceptable. Example is through commercial of
products. We follow ideologies in shampoo commercials. Models are first presented to
have a dry and frizzy hair and by using the product, they will immediately achieve a
straight and shiny hair. But in reality, these models already have a straight hair or even
maintained by a salon. Yet, we consumers tend to still believe in this idea even if we
can’t be achieving same results as the commercial.
As a whole, ideologies are already part of our life as a person. And it is up to us if
we follow what we know or just to go with the flow of what other people think about
something. Despite of ideologies, we should also have our own principles and beliefs as
an individual.