And this is the idea behind artificial neural networks, we hope the neural network will learn something of an average of what it's learning, and this idea is probably behind the Platonic ideal, because we all know what a dog is when we see one but as we know, there is much variation behind members of the canine species.
We each of us hear about things we don't know much about, we build idealized images of what we have no firsthand experience of in our heads. So if you grew up with stories of how dangerous a forest is, that it is full of big bad wolves or lyme disease.... you will probably not want to visit a forest. If every representation of a group of people you hear of is fear inducing, you will no doubt believe all people of this group are the same. Similarly, if you only see wildlife on nature shows, you'll probably have an idealistic (Disney-fied) impression that nature. I think it's the same for (human) babies.
If you know few women then how they are represented on TV becomes extremely important as Dr King understood when he convinced Nichelle Nichols to stay on Star Trek. While it was important to see black women as something other than house maids, women on TV had primarily been on TV purely as decorative. Even relatively recently a 37 year old actress was deemed too old to play the love interest of a 55 year old man. Seriously! (I have often thought mainstream media assumes the audience is all male so old men are making TV or movies for men.)
Men are routinely portrayed in a variety of roles, doing all the interesting things, yet women's primary function is to be an ornament or a prize for a man. While this is becoming better for movies and TV ocassionally, if you turn on the channel ID (I call them the murder channels) you quickly get the impression that the only good woman is young, pretty and dead. On ID we are told, women will say pretty much anything and are always to blame - whereas men are portrayed as good, the victims even if they are the murderer.
but, in general, too often the bad things men do are described as being done by 'people' whereas if we are talking about nobility in quotes it is often ascribed to 'man', 'men' or 'mankind'. Like the above quote, no part of that includes women. Do a google search on 'man' and 'nobility' - the quotes refer to pretty much any man - all men can be noble - whereas 'nobility' and 'women' will bring up paintings of queens - a very rare status that a very few women luck into.
Some while ago I wrote a blog entry about how 'crazy trump' or 'crazy republicans' were almost entirely accompanied by pictures of women. 'Crazy' is a word applied to women. So what do you think of when you hear the word 'crazy'? I feel annoyed when women say women can be as bad as men - yes indeed they can be, but on average they are not.
Look for the statistics of people who murder and yes, people who murder very much tend to be male, murder victims also tend to be male, yet the murder channels would have you think murder is a woman thing, that only women murder and they murder women. it happens, but on average it doesn't. Look at the statistics of women in prison for violent crimes verses men in prison for violent crimes. Then compare the numbers of prisoners, 97% of prisoners are male, 60% of those male prisoners are in prison for violent crimes. Yes outlier women can be as violent as men, but they are rare exceptions. And judges may have some bias but I doubt they are that biased.
Of any group of people there are good and bad examples, but when you see pictures of serial killers, there is one Aileen Wuornos for a whole raft of male serial killers. For example I recently watched this series on HBO about serial killers, and Wuornos was described as 'evil' while no such description was given to Gacy, Dahmer or Bundy....
The sciences are working hard to find historical women scientists yet still underplay women's achievements. For example if you read about Grace Hopper you will find she had something to do with developing COBOL and coining the term 'bug'. Whereas it was her team that invented the first compiler (if there had been no compiler there would be no internet, and there would be no computer in your home now). A man in a similar position probably also had a team but it'll never be mentioned.
The point is that women need to be represented in many ways, not just as ornaments instead of being stereotyped and set up for even more misogyny.