Gender and Stereotypes in adv. essays

Gender and Stereotypes in adv. essays In today's society, people are becoming more aware of the problem of stereotypes. Although we are meant to live in a fluid society, the portrayal of rigid stereotypes by the media does not help to reduce this problem. Many issues involving sexual status and gender stereotypes have been disputed, including the ethical reasoning behind why stereotypes should be dismissed and avoided in advertising. Throughout the history of Western society, there have always been unresolved issues between the male and female sex. Inequality has been the biggest of these, resulting in the appearance of movements such as feminism and post-feminism in the last century. Another problem that has been often aired is acceptance of gender and sexual preferences. The Gay Rights movement has developed in earnest of this, in an attempt to show the number of people in society who do hold fluid sexual preferences. Within the boundaries of sex, the typical stereotypes of women are often used in advertising. One of these is the idea of women in the domestic role. Often when advertising products that are designed to be used everyday around the home, companies use women to advertise these. An example of an advertisement that does this is the print ad for the Wedgwood dinner service (O'Shaughnessy, 2000). Because it is a meal whose preparation is traditionally associated with women, the advertisement is aimed towards this demographic. This idea is blatantly exploited in an advertisement for men's magazine Ralph (O'Shaughnessy, 2000), which depicts a woman cleaning up after a man. A further problem that has been found in this stereotype is that usually these women are under 30, and stay-at-home wives. However, apparently only 13% of women in Australia actually fit this role (Ad Nauseam, 1990). So although advertising is meant to reflect modern society, by looking at this it can be seen that it does not. It is because of this reason that groups such as Media Switch ha...