Your textbook reviews how women and men are portrayed in advertising. Discuss the portrayals of gender in this type of media. How influential are advertisements?
What will be an ideal response?
ANS: Some key ideas appear below. Students might also draw from classroom discussion. If you showed the movie Killing us Softly 3, this question could be easily modified to include important ideas from this film as well.
? Advertising underrepresents women and minorities.
? Men are often portrayed as incompetent in caregiving and homemaking tasks. However, male voices are often used in voice-overs for products marketed toward women, reinforcing the idea of men as authorities.
? Advertising plays a key role in promoting and pleasing others as foci of women’s lives. They reinforce the idea that women need to change themselves in order to be beautiful and remain attractive to a romantic partner. By using certain products, women will make themselves irresistible to men.
? Men are usually positioned above women and women are more frequently shown in varying states of undress, which nonverbally represents men as powerful and women as sexualized, vulnerable, and submissive.
? Advertising for men often links products with hypermasculinity and violence.
Advertising may be even more powerful than other forms of media because (1) we tend to think we are immune to it, (2) we see advertising messages repeatedly, and (3) a majority of ads emphasize visual images, which are less likely to be consciously analyzed than verbal claims.
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