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Media representation on gender
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Gender is constructed at a very young age boys are taught to be masculine and girl are taught to be more feminine. In today’s society there are many ways to identify oneself as a male or a female. One way is through materialistic items. Advertisements target women and men to sell their products. The stereotypical traits of women are motherly, caring, slim, pretty, they are more sexualized. However men are more of a dominant figure in advertisements and they are much tougher, sports oriented, powerful, bold, and simple minded. In this advertisement it shows a mother of three children in a kitchen getting her daughters ready for school. It’s telling women to take NyQuil in order to avoid sick days since they are busy taking care of their children.
This commercial is promoting Vicks Nyquil medicine. In the beginning of the commercial the viewer can hear a telephone ringing in the background. A man knocks on a door saying, “Dave, I am sorry to interrupt. I got to take a sick day tomorrow” (Vicks, 2015). The viewer is then presented with a baby. The commercial then states that dad’s do not take sick days. Therefore, they take Nyquil to feel better.
Common sense seems to dictate that commercials just advertise products. But in reality, advertising is a multi-headed beast that targets specific genders, races, ages, etc. In “Men’s Men & Women’s Women”, author Steve Craig focuses on one head of the beast: gender. Craig suggests that, “Advertisers . . . portray different images to men and women in order to exploit the different deep seated motivations and anxieties connected to gender identity.” In other words, advertisers manipulate consumers’ fantasies to sell their product. In this essay, I will be analyzing four different commercials that focuses on appealing to specific genders.
Where commercials that are selling a product to women focus on beauty or the ease of use using wording like sleek clean lines, soft, makes life easier. This is because men are portrayed as being masculine and being responsible for outdoor chores like lawn maintenance where as women are portrayed as delicate and weak and tend to be in charge of daily in home chores like cooking, and cleaning. While analyzing the genders used in the commercials and what the roles were we found that the women tended to do the shopping and asking the questions about products and the men seemed to be bored and were there to pay the bill and be the one responsible for the assembly of the product purchased. The colors of the products being sold play important role as well. Men seem to be more attracted to darker or bolder colors like black, red, green, and blue where products for women are usually lighter or softer colors like white, or pastels.
Individuals since the beginning of time have always judged each other based on gender role preferences. Since we live in a digital era, those gender role messages from society can be strongly biased on both genders. Society has a way of also influencing individuals to accept its ideas on how men and women should live. Analyzing these commercials, we are going to see just how society is judging genders on their roles, behavior, and emotions.
The problem with the imagine of the way gender is made this day and age is that females and males aren 't equal. Some people say that is because of what it says in the bible about a female being made from one of a man 's ribs and some men think that makes them better than females because they help make us with one of their bones. Along with some other men think that women need to barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. In advertising men and women are often represented differently. Men are often shown alert and aware of their surroundings, standing upright, eye open looking around, not moving a muscle, a firm or mean or serious look on their faces, gripping things tightly in their hands, hands in pockets, serious and
Sex is everywhere in our society. It is on TV, magazines, radio, billboards, and basically anywhere you look today. People cannot get away from sex in advertising because so many companies use it. Sex appeals are used in advertising all the time, and people love to look at it because 'Sometimes people listen better with their eyes' (Steel 137). Sex in advertising is an effective technique that is used today. It helps companies successfully sell their product in our market. Of course it has to be directed at the right audience, and sold at the right places in order for it to work.
I have to admit I am an avid reader of magazines. I read everything from the the stupid celebrity gossip magazines to Time magazine and National Geographic. Since our brief overview of magazine advertisements in class, I decided to look into how magazines make us think and more specifically I wanted to see how the magazine advertisements portray women, since that has been a hot topic for a while now. I like analyzing advertisements and looking at how viewers react to specific advertisements that may or may not be targeted toward them. The question I wanted to research was “How are different genders and sexualities represented in magazine advertisements?”, but I figured it was too broad for this assignment so I narrowed it down to: “How are women represented in magazines and magazine advertisements, and how is beauty portrayed?” I also wanted to touch on how gay women are represented, and I will towards the end of this paper.
This essay will attempt briefly to argue the damages and benefits of how advertising shapes women's gender identity. First of all, gender identity, sometimes referred to as an individual’s psychological sex. It has been defined as the "fundamental, existential sense of one’s maleness or femaleness" (Spence 1984, p. 83).There are many types of advertisements that might form women gender personality for instance: smoking, drinking, weight and thinness and other supporting sorts that keep women in line trying to be good-looking and fashionable. Many advertisements portray women as just body parts or in a submissive stature to extra use subliminal meaning as reinforcement for male domination.... ...
The term ‘gender’ was coined by John Money in 1955: “Gender is used to signify all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself/herself as having the status of a boy or man, girl or woman, respectively” (Coleman and Money, 1991, 13). In sociological terms, gender is a division between men and women which is clear in society throughout the past - for example, in Ancient Egypt with the idea that there was little point in teaching women to read and write. Gender inequalities can be seen throughout many different aspects of our daily lives – from the gender pay gap, to gender discrimination in television adverts.
Women – beautiful, strong matriarchal forces that drive and define a portion of the society in which we live – are poised and confident individuals who embody the essence of determination, ambition, beauty, and character. Incomprehensible and extraordinary, women are persons who possess an immense amount of depth, culture, and sophistication. Society’s incapability of understanding the frame of mind and diversity that exists within the female population has created a need to condemn the method in which women think and feel, therefore causing the rise of “male-over-female” domination – sexism. Sexism is society’s most common form of discrimination; the need to have gender based separation reveals our culture’s reluctance to embrace new ideas, people, and concepts. This is common in various aspects of human life – jobs, households, sports, and the most widespread – the media. In the media, sexism is revealed through the various submissive, sometimes foolish, and powerless roles played by female models; because of these roles women have become overlooked, ignored, disregarded – easy to look at, but so hard to see.
The average American is exposed to hundreds of advertisements per day. Advertisements targeted toward females have an enormous effect on women's thoughts, attitudes, perceptions, and actions. Most of the time, women don't even realize these advertisements are formulating self-image issues. These ideals surround them daily and they become naturalized to the ads. Advertising creates an entire worldview persuading women to emulate the images they see all around them. In order to create a market for their products, companies constantly prey upon women's self esteem, to feel like they aren't good enough just the way they are. This makes women constantly feel stressed out about their appearance (Moore). Advertising has a negative effect on women's body image, health, and self-esteem.
Davis argued that one of the biggest influences on the modification of female genitalia is the idea of female beautification. This belief is highly influenced by advertising industries. While in the past, they focused on the importance of tummy tucks and liposuction, they have now placed an emphasis on the size of female genitalia, specifically, their labia. By using magazines and websites, this industry portrays pictures of other women’s genitalia, causing women to desire other female’s bodies. Not only does the advertising industry focus on the size of genitalia, but they also reference genitalia as a means of hygiene. Advertising companies have produced websites that make fun of women due to the scent of their genitalia. Additionally, Davis
Issues with gender have become more mainstream throughout social media and our everyday lives. Gender links social, cultural, and psychological traits to either a male or female through particular social contexts. Gender, essentially, defines us as masculine or feminine; it is an achieved status through learning. This simple word, gender, causes a mass number of problems associated with its usage. It indicates all people fit into a certain category defining each gender, as an “either-or” category. This is associated with gender roles, expected attitudes and behaviors that correlate with each sex because society demands it. Research indicates that the media, particularly advertising, plays a huge role in perpetuating gender stereotypes.
The ad shows the profile of a young blonde female with a lot of makeup on one side. The female in the ad has a surprised look on her face with her eyes opened big and her mouth in a sort of “O” formation. On the other side of the ad where the female’s eyes are pointing is a picture of a sandwich. The sandwich is the BK Super 7 Incher which is the main point of the ad and what it is trying to sell. In the top right of the ad is the slogan and logo for Burger King. On the bottom the ad there is a few words that are in a large font that says, “It’ll Blow Your Mind Away”. In the caption, the words,” It’ll Blow” are quite a bit larger than the rest of the caption and the other words are smaller and beneath the larger words. Underneath that it shows another picture of the sandwich and has the name of the sandwich printed below it and also shows information of the sandwich along with that the price of it
When one hears the word “gender” it is typically assumed to be referring to the biological sex of that individual. However, gender is not a static concept in our world anymore. The traditional spheres of what is masculinity and femininity have become increasingly muddled as our society progresses socially and becomes more accepting. Along with this, however, social processes continue to take place to enforce what we believe a man and a woman should be, in an attempt to force people to fit into what we see as being a man and a woman.