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Men
generally carry more important social roles, with very few
exceptions, and this is reflected in the advertisements. Men play
roles of authorities in the advertisements who either give examples
of express their professional opinion in the contrast to women, who
mainly play submissive roles of users of the products.
Advertisement can be called a measure of social opinion as it
expresses the needs of the society but at the same time it also
forms it. It plays a vital role in promoting labels and stereotypes.
Certain ads are targeted to certain social groups. Ads, which
display different female characters, appeal to different social
groups.
In my paper I would like to study different approaches to woman in
advertising, such as treating women as sex object, housewife,
submissive, mother, professional, dumb blonde, in order to analyse
social position of women and their perspectives.
Lets focus on each type of advertisements in order to study the
social role it gives to women.
Women in advertising
First, and most traditional category of advertisements depicts women
as typical housewife, fulfilling the major gender stereotype of the
mankind. These characters radiate sweetness, warm-heartedness and
passion to house holding. For example, the advertisement of
commercially laundry “Bryza”, underlines the laundry to be totally
women occupation. In the advertisement man is singing about children
and stains and then addresses women with the words “Now You have
Bryza”. Such an attitude implies that only women can and must be
interested in laundry and other issued connected with house holding.
Another bright example of such an attitude is an ad of Virginia
Slims. This advertisement states “The sexiest move that a guy can
make [in the house] is cleaning up.” Such an attitude presupposes
that cleaning is fully women’s occupation and men, who help their
women about the house, are doing the heroic deed and should be
treated as heroes. Examples are multiple and we can calculate up to
a dozen of advertisement, where women act as typical housewives
during one commercial block. Such an attitude humiliates female
dignity and strengthens social stereotype about the woman as a
housewife. There is nothing bad in being a good housewife or taking
care about husband and children. It’s bad when all the life is
artificially and intentionally centred all around this aspect. In
order to understand the accordance of this category to ethical norms,
we should define on the ethics first. Ethics, or moral philosophy is
defined as a set of regulation, which define right or wrong
behaviour. From the ethical point of view, popularising the ideal of
house keeping can not be regarded as something wrong. We should look
deeper into the root of the problem to see another ethical problem
here. Such kind of ads can limit female rights. Voluntary or not,
but with the help of these ads socials role of the woman is reduced
to the role of typical housewife. All the actions should be agreed
with the ethics of the profession.
The role of submissive mother originally arises from the role of
housewife. Motherhood is one of main destinations of all women. We
all know about this from the childhood. Unfortunately, fatherhood
isn’t considered to be one of the main social roles of the man.
Rising children is considered to be mainly female prerogative. Such
an attitude is reflected in the advertisements, where all children
are accompanied by their caring and submissive mothers. These are
mothers, who make the children ready to school, cook them breakfast,
take care about their health, appearance, toys, etc. The chances to
see a man in the role of loving father is very small or equals zero.
These stereotypes about the role of woman as submissive mother are
reflected in ad of Chewi-Quaker. Small girl is worried about new
surrounding after moving to another school, but becomes popular when
finds Chewis and messages from her loving mother in her lunch box.
Another very bright example is a Cheetos advertisement, where the
mother of four children is driving a family van around the city.
These are typical ad when loving and caring mother helps her kids.
It’s hard for us to imagine any man on the place of the woman in the
ads about children. These ads are light and touching, but they serve
a bad service persuading the society that taking care about the
children is fully feminine responsibility. The social role of woman
is changed nowadays and the range of her responsibilities goes much
further than housework or raising children. In many families women
work on a par with men or even more, but old social stereotypes are
still alive and still give the perverted idea about the female role
in the society. Same as the first category, the ads which include
the patters of the submissive mothers don’t contradict any ethical
norms directly as they don’t include any lies or violence, but the
result can break the ethical norm, breaking the balance between
social and personal life of the women. |