Commercializing Gender Essay

Gender derives its formative meaning from culture and societal values, it is not a universal entity as there are various cultures, societal values, beliefs, and preferred ways of organizing collective life across the globe and even within a single culture the meaning of gender varies over time. Chapters three and four of Gendered Lives by Julia T. Wood helps to insightfully look at those views, and rhetorical movements (women and men’s movements) that have overtime influenced, defined and given various meanings to gender (masculinity and femininity).

Since the emergence of advertising in American culture one thing that has remained constant is the visible truth that men and women are portrayed differently. In consideration to the evolution of man kind gender roles have evolved immensely throughout time, although advertisements have not kept up with this process of evolution. Companies to this day use their tactics and skills to reach out to specific genders such as pretty fonts with a stylish message, while advertisements towards men portray the character as strong and intimidating. The typical viewer can easily spot the difference in the portrayal of genders. Men are portrayed this way because the viewers look up to these characters, they want to be

Contemporary visual media contributes to the social construction of gender in that the way that men and women are portrayed in advertising is vastly different.

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.

Gender and the Media by Rosalind Gill addresses gender stereotypes that are brought onto women and men through the media resulting in objectification and subjectification. Gill discusses how the representation of gender is altered as a result of the media in Western societies. Gender and the Media is aimed to address the rapid transmission of media and how those changes affect the construction of feminine and masculine gender roles in society. Gill uses her interest in the contradictions of gender construction by society, to analyze gender and the media. Using feminism as a backbone for her research, Gill and many commentators support the idea that feminist ideas are common and may even affect the media. Gender and the Media addresses multiple forms of media: postfeminism in advertising, gender in the news and journalism, and gender in magazines. Gild aims to address the construction of gender representations, elements for gender analysis, and feminist culture with Gender and the Media.

“The social construction of gender comes out of the general school of thought entitled social constructionism. Social constructionism proposes that everything people "know" or see as "reality" is partially, if not entirely, socially situated. To say that something is socially constructed does not mitigate the power of the concept. These basic theories of social constructionism can be applied to any issue of study pertaining to human life, including gender. This is

Recognizing a person as being female or male is an essential part in our ability in the ways we associate with man or woman. Goffman’s theory, I absolutely believe it is still active in today’s society. Advertisements are everywhere, whether it being in magazines, commercials, billboard signs and many other places something is trying to be sold in order for the public to see and sell their product. The way advertisements portray models give the impression of what femininity and masculinity should be.

Another extensive study was conducted by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, between 1984 and 1988. This study explored the portrayal of gender in Canadian broadcasting, and included a subsection exploring the portrayal of gender in television advertising. Some of their major findings included the fact that narrators were overwhelmingly male, and that male characters portrayed in the commercials were twice as likely to be employed outside the home than female characters. Female characters were also more likely to be involved in family situations, especially in child-care (CRTC, 1990). Turning to look specifically at television commercials aimed at children, careful and extensive study has determined that commercials aimed at children are sexist in their depiction of female characters (Signorielli, 1993). Focusing on the Saturday morning slot devoted to children's programming, Riffe, Goldon, Saxton, and Yu

In the Early days T.V. sitcoms portrayed women as housewives and men as the breadwinners (workforce). For example, Leave it to Beaver was a T.V. show were June Cleaver( the mother) stayed at home all times and never disciplined the children. Were as Ward Cleaver (the father) was the dominant one who worked and disciplined the children. Now, the sitcoms are completely different as far as the gender roles that each parent plays. For example, who’s the Boss were Angela was a successful businesswoman and provided for the family and Tony was the housekeeper. Commercials are another way that gender roles are displayed in society. When you see a car commercial for a mechanic most of the time the mechanic is a man. But when you see a commercial about cleaning products for the house normally a woman is the face you see. In other words, the media can help break the barriers on how gender roles are portrayed in society. The more that women represent strength on T.V. will also encourage them to build their self-confidence. However, not intending that traditional ways are bad, but the era has changed by who the individual is and not by their gender.

This study analyzed the portrayal of a woman’s independence in television advertisements. The goal was to determine if there was a difference in how women are portrayed in TV commercials when they target male and female dominant audiences based on a woman’s independence. I hypothesized that more commercials will portray woman as independent when targeting female audiences than when targeting male audiences. Fifty commercials were recorded from two different networks: Bravo Network, to analyze the commercials directed towards a females dominant audience, and ESPN, to analyze the commercials directed towards a male dominant audience. Each commercial was coded for whether the woman was working in the commercial or not. An independent sample t-test was performed in order to analyze the difference in the portrayal of woman in television advertisements when directed towards a male dominant audience versus a female dominant audience. The results of the analysis were no statistically significant. However, there was evidence that a woman’s independence is not accurately represented in television commercials.

Gender is a learned social construction on what you do. It is a cultural system based on the binary opposition of men and women but there are also variations

The roles of males and females in society have significantly changed, as opposed to the predominant roles in our history. In the modern culture of today, women have begun to break out of the mold that which society has placed her in. This much can’t be said when it comes to modern gender representation in mass media advertising. It can be safe to state that woman are seen as sexual, fragile, exotic—whereas men are portrayed as tough, in control, and aggressive. This trend can be one seen as an inhibitor to the advancement of our culture, because especially for women, it is hard to pull away from the stereotypes that are continuously represented. As examples of the given trend, the following

Advertising has had a major impact on society. Some may be considered positive and some negative. Take a look around, advertisements are placed everywhere, television commercials, billboards, newspapers, and even on the sides of buses. Advertising is the basic form of marketing and trading throughout the world. Today’s society knows it as marketers trying to influence or persuade consumers into buying something. It also serves as a medium for services and businesses. There are many advertising strategies, but television commercials will always remain the number one strategy. Think about it, how much television is watched a day, probably a lot. What better way to advertise a product or service? Advertising has a positive effect on our economy. It does not only influence and persuade consumers, but it also benefits them in many ways. It also benefits manufacturers and their company, and the world as a whole.

The way people consume media today is much different than how media was consumed fifty years ago. Before the television was popularized and found in most households across the US, many people utilized a radio to keep up with the news. Radios are still commonplace today, however, the assumption can be made that the majority of Americans spend more time watching television than they do listening to the radio in a given day. Some of the commercials that have aired in the past and some that are still shown today sometimes promote a message of inequality between males and females. A limitation of researching this topic is that because I am a male, there may be a slight bias with some of the results. These stereotypes can be found in many commercials and one in particular is the commercial the fast food company Jack in the Box aired in 2014 to promote a new product on their menu. This commercial exemplifies gender stereotypes and there are many different intercultural communication terms and concepts that can be used to better understand the stereotypes.The use of gender stereotypes, more specifically masculine stereotypes, in television commercials has negative affects on the fight for gender equality in the US.