Codes Of Gender Summary

Codes of Gender is a documentary that discusses advertisements involving women, and the impact that these advertisements have on societies beliefs about women. The documentary states that in many advertisements, adult women are seen to portraying traits of a young girl. For example, in print advertisements, both models and celebrities are often photographed with their fingers in their mouth, hiding behind objects, and lying in the fetal position. By doing this, advertisements are showing the public that women have to display a childlike innocence no matter how old they are in order to seem appealing. This mentality perpetuates the idea that women are inadequate if they reach a certain age where they are no longer to represent this childlike

The social learning theory states that people learn how to behave and about societal norms by observing. The social learning theory explains psychological impacts are caused by advertisements because people learn form observing these advertisements. For example, if a girl sees several advertisements showing women lying under men, they will infer that women should be submissive. Since these types of advertisements are all around, young girls will believe that it is normal to be submissive and follow men. Because young girls will believe this, they will try hard to emulate this behavior in their real lives, and look down upon people that challenge this behavior. Another example that shows that advertisements cause psychological impacts using social learning theory are sexualized advertisements. For example, in many advertisements, women are sexualized when doing something as simple as eating. When people view these advertisements, they will observe that women are constantly being shown as sexual beings. If young girls learn that it is necessary for them to try to be sexy in whatever they do through observation, they will feel pressured to be sexy, and upset at themselves when they cannot be like the women shown in