Essay On Gender Roles In Advertising

Advertising surrounds the world every second of the day. This form of influence has had the power to influence how society views gender roles ever since men and women began to appear in advertisements. Through the exposure to many different gender portrayals in advertising, gender roles become developed by society. This stems from how men and women are depicted, which forms stereotypes regarding the individual roles of men and women. People often shift their definition of an ideal image towards what they see in advertisements. From this, they tend to make comparisons between themselves and the advertisement models. Advertisements tend to be brief, but impactful. The different portrayals of men and women in advertising show that advertisements

The portrayals of men in advertising began shifting towards a focus on sexual appeal in the 1980s, which is around the same that women in advertising were making this shift as well. According to Amy-Chinn, advertisements from 1985 conveyed the message that “men no longer just looked, they were also to be looked at” as seen in advertisements with men who were stripped down to their briefs (2). Additionally, advertisements like these were influencing society to view the male body “as an objectified commodity” (Mager and Helgeson 240). This shows how advertisements made an impact on societal views towards gender roles by portraying men as sex objects, similarly to women. By showcasing men and women in little clothing and provocative poses, advertisements influenced society to perceive men and women with more sexual

Advertisements have begun to move away from presenting men as strictly providers for the family. There have been advertisements that show “men represented as caring partners and loving fathers as well – but it remains the case that men are rarely seen as responsible for tasks associated with day-to-day household maintenance such as cooking, cleaning and shopping” (Amy-Chinn 3). Tsai further adds to this idea by stating that advertisements show men having “lower involvement with their children, and they are predominantly shown playing with children, instead of being responsible for childcare duties” (Tsai 38). This causes society to make a shift from viewing men solely as laborers and sex objects to thinking of them as thoughtful husbands, although they should still not be responsible for household chores as seen in commercials. Women remain to be viewed as caretakers and in charge of the chores, but are now considered to be less traditional. In this sense, the power or dominance that male figures used to hold in society has become more dispersed because the gender roles of men and women have become a bit more mixed with each other. This contributes to the idea that how society views gender roles is determined by how advertisements represent