Men’s products aren’t marketed in the same way. A men’s body wash ad is on my TV right now. It’s straightforward, it acknowledges that men sometimes get dirty and smell bad – in a positive, manly way of course – and the body wash alleviates that. The men are encouraged to use the product just as a part of normal life. A women’s body wash ad would, in contrast, not be about smelling nice or getting clean, but about how skin that’s dull and dry is unattractive and so it’s important to use body wash to have attractive, moist, shiny skin. :rolleyes: It’s not about just going about the process of getting clean, it has to be about improving how you look.
Or look at the straight vanity product: hair dye. Just For Men ads are encouraging. The daughter getting dad to cover his grey to get a new job, or to get back into the dating world after mom died. Women’s hair dye ads are always scolding, either because the women have roots showing – unacceptable! – or their already dyed hair is dull and one dimensional – unacceptable! – and needs vibrance. The men are good, but could be better. The women, no matter how otherwise attractive, are wrong, and must immediately improve.
Underwear ads for men emphasize comfort. Underwear ads for women emphasize the necessity to avoid public embarrassment (the anti-wedgie panty ads with Sarah Chalke from “Scrubs”) and the omnipresent “you’re doing it wrong, do it better” meme is the underpinning (haha) of every bra ad. You must lift more you must separate better, your breasts are not appealing in their current saggy state.
Even iPhones are being marketed to women and men differently. For men, the ads are all about how you can use the apps to do a variety of things while on the phone, or waiting on hold, find a restaurant, get movie tickets, play a game, live a fun and vibrant life. Tagline is “I need my iPhone for… well… everything!” For women, the ads are all about the social and practical burdens of motherhood. Take video of the baby and facilitate good family relations by sending the video to all the relations then having a conference call to coo and awww. Get the family to the airport, check them in, make sure the children are fed and entertained, follow up when the husband is too incompetent to have even turned off the lights at home while mom wrangles the children. And the tagline is “this is why I don’t go anywhere without my iPhone” but exactly 0% of the uses of the iPhone in that ad are for the woman’s benefit at all. She’s just expected to be selfless.
That sounds like a perfect commercial for Summer’s Eve. Have the spokesman dressed up in a tight [del]pink[/del] salmon polo shirt with the collar popped, $400 oversized sunglasses, spray on tan, greased spikey hair with frosted tips.
I am not convinced that any of this is specific either to women or to body-types. Most advertising is designed to make the targeted consumer feel inadequate or otherwise bad in some respect, with the implication that if you buy the product this feeling will be assuaged.
Not to call you out specifically, but statements like this make me bristle. Ingrained sexism is still sexism; the problem is that because it’s ingrained, it just feels that “well, that’s how it is”. Like even sven said, if so, there wouldn’t be different cultures around the world that have opposite attitudes towards gender roles. Hell, look at all the lace and fancy silks men wore in Europe a couple/few centuries ago. It was only within the last century or two that fashion became more female-oriented.
I’m with you on that. I was perusing on Lemondrop and they said the exact opposite. They said men are attracted to women with an hour glass shape. Unfortunately most of the women the men picked were enhanced by plastic surgery.
I think about poor Brittney and how waif like she was and she looked like death warmed over. No wonder it only took a cold to kill her. If that is cool then it can’t be good for young womens self esteem. To be that thin you can’t really eat or enjoy food. There is no muscle left to burn so the arms look bird like.
Women need to love the bodies they are in. Our earthy bodies are just the housing for our souls. Our souls are what makes us who and what we are and that should be what we concentrate on.
I love commercials like the Geiko ones where the slightly nutty lady is selling car insurance with her own unique quirks. Her hair and everything about her is quirky. She is ok with being herself and I think it is great!
I respectfully disagree. Men’s body wash ads typically emphasize that if we neglect our hygiene, we will (unsurprisingly) smell bad - and this is unacceptable. Some body wash ads portray the users of more strongly-scented products as immature louts - which is, of course, unacceptable. The hair dye ads you mention imply that the fellow who doesn’t die his hair will fare more poorly in the dating/job market. And the iphone ad seems to be targeted towards women who enjoy baby/motherhood related stuff.
Most advertising contains a series of carrots and sticks - “Without our product, life will suck. But for a modest price, life can be grand!”
Except… her “own unique quirks” are scripted for her, and the actress/comedienne who plays her looks almost nothing like that in real life.
I know, it’s a character. I’m baffled by product placement too; I like Mad Men but I can’t fathom running out and buying a Zagnut bar just because I saw Don Draper gnawing on one.
I noticed that even the depiction of showering in commercials is much different for men and women. With men, it’s “I gotta’ scrub the dirt off before the hot water runs out scrubscrubscrub” Women are coyly smiling, eyes closed, and slowly and deliberately rubbing bars of soap or bare soapy hands their bodies, as if they’re thinking “I’m finding this shower experience to be empowering as a woman. Renew. Reflect. Revitalize. Okay, time to masturbate.” (A current trend in marketing to women; the inclusion of three “re-words”.)
Take the Axe commercials for instance. There’s two ways to interpret it. If you’re a guy, you (supposed to) think “wow if I used Axe body spray, then I could stop being a loser and have tons of hot girls fawn all over my sweet sweet bod.”
And if you’re a girl, you think “look at those women fawning all over that guy just because he’s got a new smell. That’s completely degrading and it sets the women’s movement back a decade!”
Point is that pretty much every commercial plays upon insecurity of some sort and every commercial can be interpreted as “degrading” to a certain gender…or both.
My son can’t stand the way men are depicted in ads as being idiots and whipped.
He really gets vocal about it and is always saying, “They make us men look like we are morons that can’t do anything right without the wifes help”.
There was this commercial on and a man goes out to pick up a can of corn for his wife and it should have been say, peas… The wife looks at the husband like I can’t believe how dumb you are. The man goes and gives her a hug and runs back out to the store like a good hubby. This ad launches my son! He is like, If I was the husband and she looked at me like that she wouldn’t be getting a hug or peas she would be getting the cold shoulder for a week.
I must admit that the ads do make men look stupid and helpless. Since women are the main consumers it is probably a subliminal message that if you need peas you better pick them up on the way home because your hubby will screw it up. This is not true of course but what they are projecting.
You have got to pay more attention to these commercials, Perciful!