Advertising And Social Culture And Capitalist Economy

What is it that drives commercials towards their target audience? Commercials can be for a certain age, race, and sometimes even a certain gender. Pop culture has influenced the minority groups and shed light to women 's rights or so it was thought. Lisa Shaffer a fellow student feels otherwise and believes that Pop culture has only defended traditional values and does little to challenge those who already have power . Commercials bring in gender norms and in Steve Craig’s article, “Men’s Men and Women’s Women” he speaks on four particular TV ads directed towards a particular gender. What is interesting is it shows a false image of the opposite sex to the audience being portrayed toward their preferences. It is the image the audience wants to see that appeals to them. This is all in an attempt to sell their products and take advantage of our desires and anxieties. Craig shows commercials brings gender norms that produce the ideas of what a man’s man and a woman’s woman which is why he would agree with Shaffer because it promotes an old way of thinking.

What is it that drives commercials towards their target audience? Commercials can be aimed toward certain age, race, along with certain gender groups. Pop culture has influenced minority groups and shed light on women 's rights or so it may seem. Lisa Shaffer a fellow student feels otherwise and believes that Pop culture has only defended traditional values and does little to challenge those who already have power . Commercials bring in gender norms and in Steve Craig’s article, “Men’s Men and Women’s Women” he speaks on four particular TV ads directed towards male and female audiences. Interestingly enough these tv ads deliver a false image of the opposite sex to the audience catering to their preferences. It is the image of what the audience wants to see that appeals to them. This is all in an attempt to sell products and take advantage of our desires and anxieties. Craig shows how commercials bring gender norms that produce the stigmas of a man’s man and a woman’s woman, which makes it apparent that he would agree with Shaffer because it promotes an old way of thinking.

In the short article by Steve Craig, Men’s Men and Women’s Womens, the author gives an important special to how television commercials portray gender to different audiences. He describes how an advertisers creates their attractive advertisement to appeal either male or females consumers.An advertisement that targets a specific gender to give interest to the gender to consume their product. Secondly, specific advertisement are played at select times to be seen by a specific set of people. But most importantly television programming is gendered by creating advertisements with considering their target audience needs and to give pleasure to their fantasies. I agree with this type of method to attract society to make money.

We've all seen and read many advertisements and we usually find them appealing and very persuasive. However the question is, what are they really advertising? Women are usually used for many different advertisements, not only are they used for women's clothing but also for other materials and objects. These are the ads that we look at each and every day. In, “Killing Us Softly” by Jean Kilbourne, she introduces her problem with how women are being used to advertise products. She shows us ads that she has seen where women are being used to advertise a company’s product. While our women are being used, dehumanized, and sexualized in our society, we’re going on with our life like it’s normal.

Advertisers have been using masculinity and femininity to sell since the early 1900’s and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. This is a controversial topic and has been heavily discussed within recent years.

In Craig's article, the author explores how advertising views men and women as separate consumer markets and appeals to both of them at separate times. Gender roles are heavily influential when creating commericials for each respective market. Craig details this through an analysis of beer ads

During the same era of the 1950s, women became more accounted in the domestic role ads portrayed. It was a women’s duty as a caregiver of the home to purchase commodities for her

In her essay, Jean Kilbourne sharply critique the using of men and women in advertising. She begins her essay by proposing that women are being sexualized and demoralized

A commercial is one of the advertisements that we could see in life. When you turn on television, you could see a lot of commercials before programs start. In Men’s Men and Women’s Women, Steve Craig, an author, claims that “advertisers seem quite willing to manipulate … fantasies and exploit our anxieties, especially those concerning our gender identities.” However, Stan Hope disagrees since he assumes that “the ads he describes are just light hearted to stories designed to entertain, rather than exploit. Consumers are way too smart to be so easily manipulated in any case.” Advertisements could just describe stores for entertainment like Hope said. However, advertisers should think carefully about gender identities because men and women’s favors are different.

Advertising in the 1950’s, at first glance, can be described as sexist; however, with a deeper understanding of the assumed gender roles of the decade, it is discovered that advertising was pushing established boundaries, especially that of women’s portrayal in ads. Advertising in the 1950’s was drastically different compared to today’s advertising norms. Ads in the 1950’s, under today’s values, are mostly interpreted as purely sexist. However, a deeper understanding of the decade and society can reveal how ads were even boundary pushing. While these ads may not be successful in today’s society, a simple comparison to today’s advertising can show how society’s values have shifted to accommodate different gender roles.

Ads sell much more than products. They sell moral values and cultural images, such as concepts of success, love, and sexuality. Jean Kilbourne argues that advertising is a very powerful social force that should be taken seriously. Her videos (e.g., Killing Us Softly: Advertising Images of Women; Still Killing Us Softly; and Calling the Shots: Women and and Alcohol) use print advertising as a vehicle to provide careful and cogent analyses of gender inequality. (Cortese 14)

The average person sees countless advertisements every day of their life. From a typical television commercial to advertisements printed on everyday objects such as water bottles, it sometimes seems like advertising companies have found a way to incorporate ads into every aspect of daily life. It is because of this ubiquity that it is important to examine and regulate the content of these ads. Many groups of people find themselves represented in a negative way within the media, and one of the best examples of this phenomenon is the disembodiment and hyper-sexualization of women. The constant objectification of women in Western advertising is an issue that ultimately leads to a society in which women have low self-worth.

Ceulemans & Fauconnier (2015, p.7) argue that the basic reason for a critical focus on gender and sex-role representation in
the field of advertising is because of the close connection between ‘the advertising, the consumer goods industry, and the crucial economic role of women as consumers. While there is definitely a relationship between the product type and female representation, does the female representation vary between advertisements for different brands?

Advertisements are the tremendous source of gender stereotyping. This is because they are adapted to either the masculine or feminine target. Women are more regularly displayed in ads because they are seen as a credible way for making everyday spending. Men commonly advertise cars, cigarettes, business commodities or investments, whereas women are shown rather in the publications with beautifiers and household

On television commercials, billboards, the radio, public transportation advertisements, planes, the internet, and almost everywhere people go there is always directed broadcasting of advertisements for companies to sell their product; a product that is never promoted for all of the general public to use, but instead to emphasize on specific categories of consumption . Whether it may be categorized in the decadent, the money saving, health, cleaning, cooking, automotive, or whatever sub category it may be; and bigger roles that play in to commercialism are gender roles . Men and women have very different lifestyles, what they buy, do, consume, and produce. As stated in Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes, “Popular conceptions of femininity