Friday, May 10, 2013

Representations of Gender in Advertising

This under five minute video is excellent, with some shocking statistics and thought-provoking images, and it is a great entry point to talk about how men and women are "supposed" to be, and how we need to break free of that mind trap...





Created for

"a Women and Gender Studies class at the University of Saskatchewan by Sarah Zelinski, Kayla Hatzel and Dylan Lambi-Raine [who] wanted to show how ridiculous media portrays gender roles and stereotypes in advertising through presenting gender roll reversals."

It was also interesting that in the "real" ads, all the women conformed to the thin and buxom stereotype of beauty, while in the role reversal ads, there were many different kinds of men portrayed.

What do you think?



1 comment:

Jennifer R. Hubbard said...

I found the violent ones disturbing and off-putting no matter who was in them. But the suggestive ones seemed to change tone, I guess because many of them have an underlying "who's in charge" dynamic which changes when the stereotypical dominant/submissive roles are flipped.
(The violent ones reflect power issues too, obviously, but for me the idea of pain overwhelms any other messages that might be going on, which is why those images repel me either way.)
And yes, there are also issues of "perfectly sculpted" bodies vs. "real" bodies, and I think both sexes are objectified by narrow views of attractiveness--though probably not to an equal degree.