Media has a large impact on public opinion and can easily create images and stereotypes of different groups and societies. After extensive research, I found that two of the most prominent stereotypes in international media about Lebanese society are how Lebanese are portrayed as partiers and how Lebanese woman are portrayed as plastic. This part of the literature review elaborates on articles and journals that support and aid in forming these stereotypes.

Many international news hubs portray Lebanese as party animals (Hume, 2012).

The review about the Lebanese societal stereotype of a partying audience is found in several international mediums. Four different articles from The New York times identify Beirut as a “party capital” (The New Party, 2009). The articles describe activities relating to clubbing, drinking, and nightlife, naming places such as BO18, Acid, and SkyBar as must go places for tourists (Healy, 2009).

Additionally, three videos by CNN title Lebanon as a “world class party scene” showing several clips of how clubbing has become one of the biggest parts of the Lebanese society (CNN: Beirut #1, n.d.).  One of the videos takes the audience through a day in Beirut, visiting not only night parties, but day parties as well. Thus, the video literally implies that partying is an activity done around the clock by Lebanese. Another CNN video focuses strictly on the Lebanese clubbing scene. This video markets the political instability of Lebanon, claiming that it creates the partying society we have today; living as if there is no tomorrow, literally (Beirut Nightlife, 2011). The video claims that “clubs thrive on political instability” thus creating the nature for the Lebanese partying stereotype (Beirut Nightlife, 2011). In this video, Fadi Abboud from the Lebanese Ministry of Tourism spoke of Lebanon having the best clubs in the world, suggesting that clubbing makes up a big part of the Lebanese culture and is one of the most done activities in Lebanon (Beirut Nightlife, 2011).  Furthermore, CNN travel articles on Beirut often only talk about its best bars and clubs, as opposed to listing something such as the best restaurant or tourist attractions (Brunt, 2013). Additionally, photos in the articles complement the text by showing wild pictures of nightlife, with captions such as, “nightlife capital” and “real underground clubbing” (Brunt, 2013).

Additionally, an article in a magazine titled Middle East, describes how Americans see Lebanese and what they know of Lebanon. There comments regarded “fancy Mediterranean beach clubs and buzzing nightlife” (Wells, 2009). Also, the vodka brand Smirnoff in 2010 launched ‘The Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange Program,” that cooperated with 14 countries that have “respected nightlife figures” (Smirnoff, 2010). One of these countries was Lebanon. This is another aspect that shows how the world as stereotypes Lebanon as a partying society.

These large international media hubs create a large impact on the world’s view of Lebanon, since they are known to be reliable world-read sources. Articles and videos such as these that strictly focus Lebanese as party animals are some of the main roots that create the stereotype of Lebanese in an outside audience. Overall, we can conclude that there is definitely a stereotype out there for Lebanese to be party animals.

The world has a stereotypical view that all Lebanese women get plastic surgery (Nield, 2010).

Just like with the previous stereotype, the Lebanese “Barbie” is another Lebanese cliché that has been overblown in international media, making it an established stereotype for Lebanese. The amount of plastic surgery done in Lebanon has increased a tremendous amount over the past few years and 20 to 40% of patients are now coming from outside (Heather, 2010). In fact, it has practically become a tourist attraction. The problem with this, as previously mentioned with clubbing, is that it creates an image that cosmetic surgery is a common activity in Lebanese culture. Once again, large media outlets such as CNN draw attention to such aspects and identify them with the Lebanese society, further enhancing the stereotype. One article by CNN began with, “while the search for inner beauty is this month drawing Muslims to Mecca for the Hajj pilgrimage, a different kind of search — this time for beauty of a more obvious kind — is drawing many from the Middle East to another location [Lebanon]” (Neild, 2010). However, Lebanon does not have the highest rates for plastic surgery per capita, Hungary and South Korea do (Heather, 2010). In spite of that, these two countries do not have the same reputation or stereotype on women (or men) in their countries because cosmetic procedures are not advertised in their local media.

What can be gathered from this literature review is that the stereotypes that all Lebanese women are plastic and Lebanese in general are hard-core partiers are very acclaimed. We can see that several international sources have written articles and composed media portraying Lebanese under these two stereotypes. As a result we can conclude that these are two of the ways Lebanese are viewed as by outside countries.