Essay On Gender Stereotypes In Advertising

Gender Stereotype in Advertisements

In my presentation, I will be addressing gender stereotype and how women were and are still being presented in printed advertisements in the past 80 years. The three advertisements will explore the gender roles attributed to women in advertisement and how the message shifted from a more explicit, socially acceptable and firmly established view of female roles to a more implicit conception of women in today’s society.

The first advertisement, Hardee’s, dates back to the 1940s. The main aim of the ad is to convince men to opt for Hardee’s fast food as an escapade from home-made food prepared by their wives. Obviously, men are the sole target audience here, while women are given direct orders not to “leave the kitchen”.

The ad is intended to persuade women into believing that Virginia Slims cigarettes are designed for women, and that women should not be smoking the “fat cigarettes” that men smoke. Obviously, women are the target audience of this advertisement. The general message contributes to women’s need to be dissimilar to men, and that this may be achieved by means of smoking cigarettes that are designed to fit a woman’s hand, as if men and women have gender-specific shaped hands. The ad aims to fulfil women’s need for affiliation with the much coveted slim female elite group. Similar to the first advertisement, a tone of camaraderie is used in the text, to establish a sense of belonging to a group who share common aesthetic values, being slim in this case . To involve the audience, the advertiser uses the second person pronoun ‘you’ as in “You’ve come a long way, baby” and the use of informal tone and language. The advertiser also takes into account that a female usually seeks to impress the male gender, so the speaker adopts a male flirting tone to flatter the female target audience by using the expression “baby” as in “You’ve come a long way,