Gender in advertising
Advertisements containing subliminal or direct messages about physical attractiveness and beauty have been of particular interest regarding their impact on men, women, and youth.
[1] These images are crafted to mimic real life, leading to confusion when separating the concepts of fantasy and reality in regards to advertising.
[3] Men have historically been portrayed as dominant, financial providers, career-focused, assertive and independent, whereas women have been shown as subordinate, low-position workers, or loving wives and mothers whose responsibilities focus on raising children and doing housework.
Those who do not mimic the stereotypical gender portrayals seen in advertisements and other forms of media may feel that they are inferior because of their differences, which can deter a person from choosing to pursue the life they desire, posing a threat to their mental health.
[8] Recent studies have shown that young girls that spend more time on social media show increased pressure and efforts in emulating the images that they see.
[11] Goffman states that women are weakened by advertising portrayals in five categories: relative size, feminine touch, function ranking ritualization of subordination, and licensed withdrawal.
[citation needed] Advertisements that are targeted at women, or that use female actors, often draw from themes of family-life, the natural environment, and fashion.
[3] In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, products, such as; moisturizers, soaps, deodorants, and shampoos were marketed to women through newly developed tactics of fear, sex, and emulation,[13] three key strategies that continues to influence advertising into the modern era.
Fear tactics in advertisements from this time period often depict women that fail to meet the social expectation that they always appear presentable facing social rejection, painting them as outcasts and undesirable to men, with many examples from advertisements of this period shaming women that fail to maintain an assumed level of personal hygiene.
[13] Female subjects are commonly portrayed as helpless in any areas besides what is expected of them, relying on men to perform more mentally or physically laborious tasks for them.
[2] Tech advertising has historically reflected broader societal expectations of women, often portraying them in stereotypical domestic or supportive roles.
[citation needed] Apple Inc. created campaigns that attempted to challenge these roles, reshaping how femininity was represented in the tech industry.
[15] Featuring Anya Major as a hammer-throwing athlete, the ad displayed acts of rebellion and change, challenging the conformity represented by IBM.
Ridley Scott has claimed that he purposefully chose Anya Major, an athlete and actress, for her strength and commanding presence, which defied traditional representations of women as passive or secondary figures.
Men that fail to meet these standards, or that show feminine traits such as compassion, emotionality can be seen in advertisements as weak, and often as a source of comedy.
[22] Advertisements use female bodies as a key form of marketing to consumers, with women often appearing as an object of desire, something to be controlled, something to be won by men, as well as delicate and fragile in nature.
[24] In many advertisements, phallic objects are shown aiming at the female subjects face, breasts genitalia, or anal region in order to induce images of sexual intercourse.
In her book, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women,[32] author Jessica Valenti documents the cultural impact of this campaign.
Additionally, young women were warned that if they were to take birth control, they were increasing their chances of contracting STIs, and that the performance of abortions may kill them.
Additionally, pressure was put on young female celebrities to maintain a pure image, with a failure to do so resulting in public ridicule and shunning.
From the perspective of social cognitive theory, advertisements rarely depict women in the workplace, which may decrease interest in jobs traditionally related to the opposite sex.
Still, there are those who have a deep understanding of the changes made to the ASA, such as Dr. Alexandros Antoniou and Dr. Dimitris Akrivos, who see them as more of a step in the right direction rather than the solution that is truly needed.
[35] An analysis of online advertisements is becoming increasingly important as YouTube’s users are predominantly young people who are actively forming their beliefs.
What kinds of differences those entail depends on where the viewer lives as well as the user viewing history on the site, which was accounted for in any statistics mentioned in this section.
[35] Men in both cultures were three times more likely than women to make fact-based arguments for a product; this rate was twice as high as that observed in traditional advertisements.
When advertisements’ depictions of gender were non-stereotypical, people generally viewed the brand and product in a more positive light while experiencing a feeling of social connectedness.
[3] A study conducted in South Africa, the UK, and Poland found that regardless of political affiliation when men played roles where they displayed more warmth at the expense of competence, the advertisements were viewed more positively.
In a South Korean study, it was found that a person’s desire to be unique and whether they tend to be independent or interdependent affected their perceptions of an advertisement that contained gender stereotypes.
Conservatives in the aforementioned multinational study were found to view advertisements containing traditional gender roles slightly more positively than liberals.
The portrayal of gender in advertisements can elicit emotional responses from people, and generally, heterosexual individuals prefer less overt LGBTQ imagery.
