Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Gendered Stereotypes Online Exercise


Print Ad:
For the print ad of the woman, the gender stereotype would have to be that women are not as strong as men. You do not understand what the ad is about just by the photograph; a woman that has wide eyes, hair put up in a 1950s style, and putting her hand to a bottle’s lid. She almost has a dumb surprised look on her face. Then you read the bold letters right under the photograph; “You mean a woman can open it?” This makes it seem that women are not capable of opening up anything without someone’s (male) help.  The woman is almost doing “the feminine touch” to the bottle’s lid; relaxed posted fingers. It’s a gentle touch to the bottle’s lid, like how a mother would be with their child.

Video #1:

The commercial is telling young girls that “special place” and “place of my own” is where you take care of a baby, make food, and clean the laundry.  This commercial is showing that girls (females) are only good at things dealing with the house and what’s inside.   They do this by saying, “Taking care of my home, is a dream, dream, dream.”
To break this commercial’s negative stereotype of girls (women) there is a lot of work that needs to be done. First, they would have to change the audio in the background. It is telling the wrong message to the young girls. It is fun play house once in awhile; however, only having them clean laundry, cook and take care of the baby is a big stereotype. Also, that’s not all what women do; we can do anything that males could do. Secondly, they need more then the cleaning, cooking, and baby stuff for accessories in this play house for girls. Maybe having a table with a laptop/computer on it could show that it is not just all about being a “mother” in the future.  There should be another type of room besides the kitchen and a nursery. Boys can get garage stuff like tools, workshop, and even a castle; these are also stereotypes for boys.

Video #2:


In groups of 4 describe what is happening in the following ad.
A group of 5 attractive women are sitting in a park. They are sitting on the grass drinking Diet Coke out of a can. Then one woman sees an attractive man mowing the grass just down a small hill; then she pointed it out to the other women. The woman that saw him first then rolled down a can of Diet Coke to the man that was mowing. The can of Diet Coke bounced up and down on its way to the man. It then hits the man’s mower; the he picked it up the can and looked at the women. The women that through it down to him made a gesture to drink it. He opens the can and it started to spray all over him making him and his shirt wet. The women started to laugh about what just happen and gasp over it as well.  Then the man grins and took his shirt off; the women where stun by this action. He then rings out his wet shirt, and when back to mowing.

Now reverse the roles and redesign the ad.
When we reverse the roles, the group of women becomes a group of men and the male mower is now a female; the ad would change drastically. A group of men would not be located at a park just standing ot sitting around together talking. They would be playing a game at the park (basketball or baseball). Then they would see the woman mowing or doing some other landscaping; then would roll down the Diet Coke to her and it would exploded just like in the original ad. Then the men would laugh and the women would take her top layer of the shirt off, showing here undershirt and walk away grinning. 

What is wrong with the new version of the ad?
What is wrong with the new version is that it seems sexist. This is because the men are doing this action to a woman. People think that men cannot do something like this to a woman; however, it is just fine if women do it to men.


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