Asian American Stereotypes

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Stereotyping is an idea or perception of a group of individuals that does not accurately portray the truth. It is how each culture views other cultures. As a matter of fact, stereotyping can be functional or dysfunctional. It is functional when it is viewed as a way of guiding one’s expectations (Culture and Ads). It is dysfunctional when it is used to judge certain individuals. Advertising agencies are using dysfunctional stereotypes to instantly create negative recognition and attitudes towards racial, gender and behavior stereotypes. Advertising agencies have taken advantage of their power in US culture and created a racial ideology. In fact, Fowles, 1996; Jhally, 1987; Leiss, Kline, & Jhally, 1986, have referred to advertisement as a tool …show more content…

Wilson and Gutierrez (1995) have concluded that when a minority is used in advertisement, they are shown in a way that satisfies the White race. Due to the positive depiction of Asian Americans, people have assumed that African Americans and Latinos must not have the right discipline or background that Asians have (Paek & Shah, 2011). Shah and Paek analyzed ads from the top 3 magazines in America to see how each race is represented and found that out of a total of 526 ads, 54 included Asian Americans which is 70 actors, 93 included African Americans which is 132 actors, and 42 included Latinos …show more content…

Thus the use of gender stereotypes in advertisement can lead to negative outcomes for women because it produces false judgment of women (Eisend, et al., 2014). As a result issues regarding the use of stereotypes has raised concerns. Even though advertising agencies use humor to distract the audience from the message along with gender stereotypes by defying social norms of gender roles, research showed that ads using women were not humorous compared to the ads using men. For example, IKEA, a famous home good store, created two ads that showed the effect of gender stereotyping and humor. The first ad showed a woman cleaning while her husband sat on the couch with no appliance of humor as if it was a normal setting. The second ad showed the man cleaning while the wife was relaxing. However, the second ad included humor by showing the man cleaning with one arm and lifting the couch that his wife is sitting on with the other arm. Through these simple ads, women are portrayed as only capable of doing simple chores such as cleaning the house and men’s role as the strong and fit gender was exaggerated. Such ads encourage men to look down on women like they were inferior to men. Despite the fact that agencies use humor to distract the audience, women have the ability to elaborate advertising

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