Women in advertising

Throughout the history of advertising there have always been two kinds of people: women and men. Men are strong, dominant, go to work, drink beer, drive cars and fix things. Women are there to support men: they are submissive, clean the house, take care of the kids and look sexy. These are the gender stereotypes supported by advertisements. 

 The past 

The following ads are very strong examples for the three different roles that a woman could have in the past: 

 

The sexy, submissive woman. She is there to fulfill her husband’s needs and is lying to his feet. She has no need for an own opinion because her master is deciding everything for her. Moreover she is mostly (half-)naked.

 

      The housewife. She is responsible for cooking, cleaning and taking care of the kids. Her husband is earning the money and her only problem is how to be an even better housewife.

 

The stupid woman. She doesn’t know anything about technology, cars or other typically masculine things. She usually appears in advertisements to promote that even a woman can handle a certain product.

The present

You would think that nowadays there are not as many stereotypes in advertisements as in the past. Clearly, the emancipation movement must have changed something! That is right, not all advertisements show the three types of women described above. Dove is a great example for helping fight women’s stereotypes. They feature women and girls from all ages, skin colors and body types in their advertisements, showing that women are not just objects:

Nevertheless there are still many gender stereotypes in advertising.

The girl in this Axe ad needs a man to get rescued from the shark. She is wearing a tiny bikini and has a fit body. After the lifeguard saved her life, she almost kisses him, which shows that he has power over her. But then there is an astronaut coming along and the girl becomes a total victim of her sexual needs and runs towards him with her mouth half open.

But not only the “sexy woman” is still around. You can also find the “housewife” quite too often.

 

There are usually women cleaning the house and men or the whole family admiring the results. 

The future

Will advertisements ever treat women and men equally? I want to see girls playing with cars and boys starring in a Barbie commercial! But it is still a long way to get there. Advertisements mirror the stereotypes that already exist in our society but they also reinforce them by confronting us with them every day. It seems to be a vicious circle that can only be stopped by our own thinking. Advertisers will not stop using stereotypes because each product has a certain target audience and the easiest way to approach it is by using the things that it likes. For example a commercial for a baby doll is most appealing for girls if it features another girl playing with the doll and putting pink dresses on it. If the child in the commercial would be a boy, many girls might not be able to identify with him and the boys watching the commercial would not be interested either because they never played with a doll before.

So if we start thinking different of ourselves maybe there will be more advertisements showing us strong, independent women in the future!