Advertising is an important social phenomenon. It both stimulates consumption, economic activity models, life-styles and a certain value orientation. Consumers are confronted with extensive daily doses of advertising in multiple media. With the continual attack of marketing media, it is presumable that it will affect our individualism and society as a whole. What are the effects of advertising today? Does television reinforce the mainstream ideology of contemporary culture? How do they shape the society? Can the media help break the barriers of gender roles? Consumer minds’ can be changed, opinions molded. I believe advertising in the media today is slightly changing, however will not drastically change. The commercials and advertisements still implant the usual gender roles to our society today. Will the media ever change?
The methodology used was researching, analyzing, and observing magazine ads, plus watching commercials for a full three hours to help in exposing the advertising in the media and how it seems to characterize our society today.
Commercials are a way that gender roles are displayed in society. When you see a car commercial for a mechanic most of the time the mechanic is a man. But when you see a commercial about cleaning products for the house, normally a woman is the face you see. In other words, the media can help break the barriers on how gender roles are portrayed in society. The more those women represent strength on television; it will then encourage them to build their own self-confidence.
In review of the television viewing of women and men, it is easy to forget that the hours they spend watching television are a substantial part of each week. Excluding hours spent sleeping, women spend approximately 1 hour out of every 4 hours of each day watching television. Men, not far behind, spend about 1 hour out of every 5 hours of each day watching television (Butler 1980).
In general, these concentrated views of manhood suggest the many ways in which advertising negatively affects men by narrowing the definition of what it means to be a man in American society. Upon re-viewing the advertisements and commercials, I realized how much the role of the strong, silent, authoritarian, militaristic and threatening male pervades societal ideals. Although it's neither realistic nor a positive role to emulate, it also shapes men's views of themsel...
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...dividuals die from lung cancer and second hand smoke. That’s a positive outlook for the future. The media needs to implement positive images of males and females in their advertisements and commercials all over the world. Television allows people to see more things and so choose what they want to be – but unfortunately that choice for girls and boys are often one full of impossible contradictions in what they are shown, meaning that television perhaps confuses further an issue which it could help to resolve with more equal and less stereotypical portrayals of women and men. The advertisers are making plenty of money promoting this rubbish; nonetheless I believe there may be slight changes in the future. On the other hand, the major adjustment is going to take time to draw closer.
Works Cited
Anderson, Margaret L. 2000. Thinking about Women: Sociological Perspectives on Sex and Gender. Pearson Education, Inc.
Butler, Matilda. 1980. Women and the Mass Media. New York, NY: Human Sciences
Press.
Melville, Dennis A.; Cornish, Ian M. “Conservatism and Gender in the Perception of
Sex-Roles in Television Advertisements”. Perceptual and Motor Skills. 1993, Vol. 77,
p642.
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I actually cannot find any weak point in this article because everything seem so tight and strong. The author but didn 't state how much they suffered in there. He could
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