The oversexualiztion of men in advertisement often reflect the standards we place on men and what the ideal man is. After examining many ads I discovered the standards that are the very reason why advertisements can objectify men without have negative backlash. These advertisements are deemed acceptable because they support the notion of heteronormativity (or the heteronormative gaze). Heteronormativity is the common beliefs of heterosexuality being the norm of both genders and this intersects with the everyday life of people. After understanding this factor I noticed that the advertising of males followed a pattern of heterosexuality and hypersexulity. Within these ads the men are to seen as the ideal male that we should all strive to be like. …show more content…
Overall companies know in order to make money their brands, a products, services, or ideas to breakthrough the masses, their advertisement needs to draw on the viewer's attention. When drawing on their attention they can promote and gain traction. When analyzing the ads from many companies I saw the main tactic was appealing to the viewers humor and satire. By using humor and satire the ad made the males seem larger than life while doing simple everyday things. The larger than life status is usually being presented by being strong, muscular, and attractive, from these ads we are led to believe men will attract more women this way. With these factors in mind a company's goal is being accomplished while still adhering to oversexualization of Men. For the male audience they are being pursued to buy a certain product so they too reach larger than life status. The oversexualiztion of males in these ads also aim to the desires of a female audience. These ads reinforce the idea of what woman should want in men and how men should behave towards women. This attributes to the notions of heteronormative with these commercials …show more content…
Old Spice is an American brand of deodorant and other body cleansing products with a unique history. In its conception Old Spice mainly catered towards feminine needs but soon they discovered men mainly bought their products. This factor leads to the Old Spice we know today and their influence we that we do not notice. I analyzed Old Spice commercials from 2010-2016 and correlated it to my thoughts about the oversexualiton of man. Within the six years these commercials aired it starred actor Terry Crews and Isaiah Mustafa . These two actors are not the typical model or actor used for advertisements with them being dark skinned black males. Despite being apart of a demographic that's not typically represented as the ideal male they still carry traits of the ideal man. Terry Crews is a very masculine buff man in appearance and Isaiah is slightly slimmer but still very muscular in shape. These very traits attributes to the reinforce image of man being hypersexual and hypermasculine. In the Old Spice commercial Crews and Mustafa interacts with the audience in a humorous way which helps gains the audience attention. These commercial start off with either Crews or Mustafa in shower half naked with their abs and muscle on full display saying “Look down, back up. Where are you? You’re on a __(Insert whatever exotic or unrealistic setting ) _________-” This part of the commercial is
It’s clear that those advertisements try to make an impact on our buying decisions. We can even say they manipulate viewers by targeting specific group of people or categorizing them so they could have a feeling this product is intended for them or what he or she represents. For instance, they use gender stereotypes. Advertises make use of men and woman appearance or behavior for the sake of making the message memorable. Therefore, most effective and common method is to represent a woman as a sexual object. They are linked with home environment where being a housewife or a mother is a perfect job for the. In other hand men are used more as work done representations. They are associated with power, leadership and efficiency. Those stereotypes make the consumer categorize themselves and reveals the mainstream idea of social status each gender needs to be to fit in and what products they are necessary to have to be part of that
Though Old Spice targets and appeals to females, they do sell men’s hygiene products, thus, also attracting males and running an ad campaign that males can enjoy. The constant lack of shirts is just enough sexual appeal to catch the audiences’ attention, without driving them away. The caricature of the perfect man, easily enacting a variety of roles, is entertaining for females and males. Additionally, the commercial uses quick transitions and repetition to keep the audiences’ attention and to reinforce the association of Old Spice with the ideal man. Old Spice sells their image as representing the perfect man, and hey if you can’t be him, well you can at least smell like him.
In the old spice commercial, the brand is showing that men are just brainless robots and the women are just hyper-sexual individuals. The setting of the commercial is in a nightclub where women are dress in provocative clothes that come off like they are looking for sexual intention from the men. Men are
Advertising sends gender messages to both men and women. Advertising tells women how they should look and act, and it tells men to expect women to look and act that particular
Men and women both drive cars, it’s a simple necessity to be able go to work for most people, however, from the commercials on television, one would assume that men are the primary purchasers of cars. In Steve Craig’s essay, Men’s Men and Women’s Women, he analyzes four commercials to illustrate how advertisers strategically targets the viewers. Craig argues that advertisers will grasp the attention of the viewer by the gender ideals that both men and women have of each other. Not only do advertisers pick a target audience demographic, but they also will target the audience at specific time to air their commercials. By analyzing an Audi and Bud Light commercial, one can see that Craig arguments are true to an extent but it appears that commercials have gone from an idealized world to a more realistic and relatable stance. for are still [true, however it seems that commercials may have altered to appear more realistic.] [relevant to an extent. This is to say, it appears that advertisers may have altered their commercial tactics. ]
Professors Carrie Packwood and Debra Merskin, authors of the essay “Having It His Way: The Construction of Masculinity in Fast-Food Advertising”, repudiate the stereotypical macho behaviors that are used in several commercials to build a reputation for men while women are used as objects. Media use this stereotype to sell nearly every product; being fast food, beer, and cars on top of the list. Furthermore, Packwood and Merskin claim that advertisement present men, compared to women, as superior individuals with total freedom who see women as prizes. The perfect macho type is a strong resource to sell beer; the Tui beer commercial “Temptations can be dangerous, stay focused” applied this stereotype, where men are on the spotlight and women
The Paco Rabanne Invictus fragrance for men advert, published in 2013, seems to portray how a modern male should appear: strong, muscular, and heavily tattooed while women are perceived as relationship-oriented, and eye-candies: a lightweight drapery hides their private parts whilst revealing their forms. Thus, it reinforces gender stereotypes. As Buying Into Sexy points out sex sells, and people tend to be heavily exposed to adds as well as “music videos that feature plenty of sexual innuendo”. That is why humongous corporations “(create) a certain environment of images that we grow up in and that we become used to (in order to) shape what we know and what we understand about the world”, states Justin Lewis in Mickey Mouse Monopoly. So, how is the ideology of masculinity represented throughout this ad? The warrior-esque man is physically desirable, and irresistible to women. Even though the audiences are aware of the existed hyperbole, they might focus on the experienced feelings of smelling good.
Common sense seems to dictate that commercials just advertise products. But in reality, advertising is a multi-headed beast that targets specific genders, races, ages, etc. In “Men’s Men & Women’s Women”, author Steve Craig focuses on one head of the beast: gender. Craig suggests that, “Advertisers . . . portray different images to men and women in order to exploit the different deep seated motivations and anxieties connected to gender identity.” In other words, advertisers manipulate consumers’ fantasies to sell their product. In this essay, I will be analyzing four different commercials that focuses on appealing to specific genders.
Where commercials that are selling a product to women focus on beauty or the ease of use using wording like sleek clean lines, soft, makes life easier. This is because men are portrayed as being masculine and being responsible for outdoor chores like lawn maintenance where as women are portrayed as delicate and weak and tend to be in charge of daily in home chores like cooking, and cleaning. While analyzing the genders used in the commercials and what the roles were we found that the women tended to do the shopping and asking the questions about products and the men seemed to be bored and were there to pay the bill and be the one responsible for the assembly of the product purchased. The colors of the products being sold play important role as well. Men seem to be more attracted to darker or bolder colors like black, red, green, and blue where products for women are usually lighter or softer colors like white, or pastels.
In the essay “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body,” author and philosopher Susan Bordo discusses the history and current state of male representation in advertisements. While using her feminist background, Bordo compares and contrasts the aspects of how men and women are portrayed in the public eye. She claims that there has been a paradigm shift the media with the theory that not just women are being objectified in the public eye, but also men too. Since the mid-1970s, with the introduction of Calvin Klein commercials, men have started to become more dehumanized and regarded as sex symbols. In a similar fashion to how Bordo describes gender, race plays a similar role in the media. People of all different ethnicities and cultures are being categorized into an oversimplified and usually unfair image by the media over basic characteristics.
The portrayals of men in advertising began shifting towards a focus on sexual appeal in the 1980s, which is around the same that women in advertising were making this shift as well. According to Amy-Chinn, advertisements from 1985 conveyed the message that “men no longer just looked, they were also to be looked at” as seen in advertisements with men who were stripped down to their briefs (2). Additionally, advertisements like these were influencing society to view the male body “as an objectified commodity” (Mager and Helgeson 240). This shows how advertisements made an impact on societal views towards gender roles by portraying men as sex objects, similarly to women. By showcasing men and women in little clothing and provocative poses, advertisements influenced society to perceive men and women with more sexual
To sum up, it is often said that advertising is shaping women gender identity, and some have been argued that the statement is true, because of the higher amount of sexual references of women that advertisement show and the damages that occur on women’s personality and the public negative opinions of those women. As well, the negative effects that those kinds of advertisements cause to young generations and make them feel like they should simulate such things and are proud of what they are doing because famous actors are posting their pictures that way. Others deem this case as a personal freedom and absolutely unrelated to shaping women gender identity. On the contrast, they believe that, those sorts of advertisements are seriously teaching women how to stay healthy and be attractive, so they might have self-satisfaction after all.
Advertisements have been utilized for many years to sell products. The very popular company Old Spice, who is one of the top men’s hygienic production companies, is well known for their series of humorous advertising campaigns that uses references to the ideals of what a stereotypical masculine man is supposed to be characterized as. The Old Spice commercial, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” that first appeared during the Superbowl in 2010, illustrates that the company successfully utilizes the influence of humor, gender stereotypes, and ethos and pathos to connect emotionally with the audience and persuades men to start using Old Spice Red Zone body wash so that insecure men can become more of a masculine man that females will desire.
The objectification of women is a huge issue in society and is often led by advertising. However, many men still believe that the adverts depicting women in a sexual and often passive posture are not very offensive, but rather very funny or sexy. However, how would they feel if it were their daughter or sister being advertised throughout the world as a sexual object? The Tiger Beer advertisement shown in the appendix is a clear example of the objectification of women in advertising. The Tiger Beer advert was made to appeal to men from the age of 20 to 60.
The Old Spice Campaign that I chose is a one-sided message is the communications in which only positive attributes or benefits of a product or service are presented. The message in the ad is one-sided because it is only mentioning the positive aspects of the deodorant, it does not have any negative aspects on the ad. Old Spice advertisements always has a male presence, and it is usually a famous person. They usually have different types of male celebrities ranging from actors to athletes. Old Spice uses the humor appeal to get their message across to their target market. In their advertisements there is always something that stands out to appeal to the consumers. With this campaign it centers on the Old Spice Man answering questions from the viewers, and doing different activities, being different places and having costumes on. The ending of the commercial always has a surprise ending leaving the viewer astonished. The campaign appeals to the humor appeal because it uses humor, but not too much so that consumers can pay attention to the product that is being advertised. On the Old Spice YouTube channel for the commercial in the description box it says “We’re not saying this body wash will make your man smell like a romantic millionaire jet fighter pilot, but we are sure insinuating it”, which is appealing to humor because you know that your man is not going to smell like it, but are suggesting that they would