| Abstract (english) | "There is scarcely a home, in a city or hamlet, where some human being is not doing what [advertising companies] demand. The good advertising man comes pretty close to being an absolute czar." Claude Hopkins (Lears, 1984:359) according to James Twitchell (1996: 14). Ads are everywhere. This quote from 1909 clearly demonstrates the generally accepted perception of the power of advertisement more than a hundred years ago, and not much has changed today. The human brain is an undeniably powerful machine, capable of many amazing feats we know of, and likely some we don’t. However, its very capacity for incredible data input and retention makes it vulnerable to targeted messages. Nobody likes admitting that commercials have an influence on them, always pointing fingers at their neighbours while claiming to be immune themselves. The fact is, it has been rigorously tested and unquestionably proven that advertisements affect us much more than we may realize. Ad companies invest a lot of time, effort and money into doing what they do best – sell a certain version of reality. How much their reality coincides with the real world has always been questionable and under scrutiny, because reality is all about perception. And as such, it affects different people in very different ways. Is the created reality we consume through the media a true reflection of the state of society? And if not, what effects can and do commercials have on a population faced with advertisement at every turn? Do we change our opinions, behaviours or habits based on the products and services advertisers try to convince us are essential? It seems we do. Advertisers wouldn’t spend centuries playing a losing game, so they must have sufficient returns for their investments. In this paper, I will present the common gender stereotypes in ads for both women and men, compare some unnecessarily gendered products and attempt to dissect the effect they have and their role in perpetuating harmful and out-dated gender roles. In the first part of this paper, I will focus on two of the most common negative women's stereotypes, while in the second part I will cover the one male stereotype which gathered the most backlash from men. Lastly, in the third part, I will write about gendered marketing, the discriminatory Pink tax and the influence ads have on consumers and society as a whole. |
