To signify masculinity, this Chevrolet advertisement portrays many hegemonic male ideologies, such as the ability to be attractive to women, love of the outdoors and extreme sports, and confidence. The advertisement compares these ideologies to an average, shy guy, who through using a Chevrolet truck can obtain all of these hegemonic male ideologies. The advertisement utilizes the “Lynx Effect”(Feasey,2009) and sought after hegemonic male ideologies, to suggest that men strive to increase their masculinity through consuming products that reflect male hegemonic ideologies. For decades advertisements have been targeting mens insecurities in order to persuade them into consuming their products. These insecurities are their lack of masculine hegemonic ideologies. Hegemonic being dominant …show more content…
The “Lynx Effect” originated from ads of a mens fragrance company in Britain, which repeatedly showed average men attracting gorgeous women, just because of the scent of Lynx that the actor in the advertisement was emitting. The Chevrolet advertisement shows Kyle, an average guy, being able to attract “an increase of over %3000” to his dating profile through “trucking up” his profile and adding photos and videos of himself using and around a Chevrolet truck. Just as the Lynx body fragrance was able to get an ordinary guy to become a heart throb for girls, the new Chevrolet truck automatically made Kyle more attractive to girls. The concept behind the “Lynx Effect” is that it wants consumers to believe that “if the product can turn the ‘normal’ male into a magnet for the opposite sex, then it can perform this same feat for the young man in the audience”(Feasey, 2009). So it is clear to see how in the advertisement the “Lynx Effect” is used to target a large consumer base of average men, trying to acquire the same ideologies as Kyle, hopefully for similar
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
Michael Messner and Jeffrey Montez de Oca explain that contemporary beer ads represent a desirable male lifestyle to reaffirm masculinity in a time when men are insecure. Their essay, “The Male Consumer as a Loser: Beer and Liquor Ads in Mega Sports Media Events,” goes on to list the reasons for their insecurities: historic and cultural shifts such as deindustrialization, declining real value of wages, feminists and sexual minorities. They support their main point by providing a window to the past as beer ads of the 1950s depicted a desirable lifestyle that was appropriate for post war style of living. By following the transitions of beer ads from the 1950s to now, we could follow the accepted lifestyles of the times during which the ad was made.
The 2012 Canadian Club Whisky ad uses gender roles attributes in order to persuade possible male consumers into consuming the product by appealing to their sense of masculinity. The goal is to reach men’s pride and lead them to believe that Canadian Club Whisky is capable of “helping” them achieve society’s ideal of a man through images and sentences that remind them of manhood.
When Americans think of masculinity, they often see an unemotional, assertive, and muscular man. This identity is broadcasted all over America and young boys and men are soaking it up like a sponge. During the superbowl every year, companies display commercials that are intended to subconsciously show men how they’re suppose to carry themselves. For instance, in the Miller Lite commercial “Man card”, four friends are at a club when they see their friend sweet talking a girl in the corner and they proceed to tell him to “Man up”, also in the next clip the same 3 guys are playing football when they see the other guy riding a scooter and they proceeded to tell him what he’s doing is “unmanly”. This shows that sexist commercials aren’t just aimed towards women but also to men and young boys. While reading CJ Pascoe’s, “Dude. You’re a Fag”, She argues that the word “fag” has little to do with someone being gay and that it can have several meanings. Michael Kimmel believes that boys are being taught to be tough at very young ages, which cause them to sometimes act
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.
Advertisers create images people think are the most appealing based on their targeted audience. For example, in the documentary, Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising’s Image of Women Now, Jean Kilbourne sheds light on how advertisers use unrealistic, distorted images to reach their target audience. Kilbourne showed a video on how Photoshop is used to turn a normal woman into the “perfect” woman used in ads. This shapes how women view their own body images because they want to be like the women used on billboards. This does not exclude men. According to Fabio Parasecoli, there is a growing regard on the muscular body which increases the pressure on men to take better care of their bodies. This in part has to do with advertising and how advertisers portray the ideal man and how, “many of the advertising pages in these magazines (Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle and Fitness) often play with a sense of inadequacy.” (Parasecoli 189). An example is the Old Spice commercial, which features a very toned, good looking male talking to the camera, (female members of the audience) telling them to look at him and then to look at their “man” and how if their man uses Old Spice they can look like him. This is clearly shaping how men look at their own body’s because they want to look like the ideal male. Advertisers distort images and use these “ideal” people to display their product to sell, but really its shaping how people view their own body in a negative way. Although advertisements have now become a big part of body image, people’s views strongly stem from their personal
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.
In the views of Micheal Kimmel “hegemonic masculinity” is a socially constructed process where men are pressured by social norms of masculine ideals to perform behaviors of a “true man” and its influence on young male’s growth. It is the ideology that being a man with power and expressing control over women is a dominant factor of being a biological male. The structure of masculinity was developed within the 18th to 19th century, as men who owned property and provided for his family with strength related work environments was the perfect example of being a generic “American man.” Kimmel introduces Marketplace Manhood and its relation to American men. He states, “Marketplace Masculinity describes the normative definition of American masculinity.
Advertising in American culture has taken on the very interesting character of representing our culture as a whole. Take this Calvin Klein ad for example. It shows the sexualization of not only the Calvin Klein clothing, but the female gender overall. It displays the socially constructed body, or the ideal body for women and girls in America. Using celebrities in the upper class to sell clothing, this advertisement makes owning a product an indication of your class in the American class system. In addition to this, feminism, and how that impacts potential consumer’s perception of the product, is also implicated. Advertisements are powerful things that can convey specific messages without using words or printed text, and can be conveyed in the split-second that it takes to see the image. In this way, the public underestimates how much they are influenced by what they see on television, in magazines, or online.
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 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.
In this paper we will explore how advertisements cultivate a woman’s need for consumerism as a part of their own self image. George Gerbner, the founder of cultivation theory, argued that television has the ability to impact the way that people percieve certain message and influence their everyday life. In this study, we will conduct a content analysis of quantitative and qualitative measures that will study fashion advertisements. Each advertisement will be critiqued by a set of questions to help find any pattern or correlation between attributes that may have an impact on female consumers. A sample population will be drawn at random on three different occasions containing women from the ages of 18-30. In the first group each individual that is selected will be given a survey of questions. This set of questions will focus on the shaping of body image with the use of makeup, accessories, and clothing, and help identify trends between fashion and life style. The second sample group will participate in a focus group discussion that will be directed towards how women see themselves with regards to their own body image. The third group of women will complete a written survey before and after being exposed to television advertisements. This will test to see if advertisements entice woman to purchase products or change their personal portrayal.