The World isn't Black & White, It's Pink & Blue - Gender, Sexuality, & Advertising Images

In Beauty and the Beast of Advertising, Kilbourne states: "[...] the ads sell a great deal more than products. They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth, love and sexuality, popularity and normalcy. They tell us who we are and who we should be" (Kilbourne, 121). This statement could not have been closer to reality. When we reach out to grab a bar of soap in the aisle of a supermarket, we are told that there are female colors vs. male colors, female fragrances vs. male fragrances and that distinction is further pronounced with shapes, angles (or curves), and of course a visualization of what is male and female according to societal standards. I recall, at a younger age, the older female figures in my family would pick up a bottle of shampoo or see a cheesy ad on television and point out the absurdities and lies the company was selling. I never fully comprehended their agitation with those ads until I was old enough to realize the impact similar ads had on my consumer behavior and my inner monologue.

However, little did I pay attention to race or gender-specific roles in the ads I was exposed to even after I realized they were perpetuating unattainable beauty standards. Questions such as why a Caucasian female on the face of the ad instead of an Asian, African American, or Middle Eastern never occurred to me. Why have a male play the engineer, physician, or over-all dominating role in an ad was never a question. It was normal. Almost ten years later and during a discussion I had with a family member, they proceeded to mention that word: “normal.” I was brought up between two very distinct cultures and my definition of normal (or rather what I learned to define as normal) turned out to be different from what the other person perceived as normal. What is normal, I then asked. Define it, give examples, expand, is it applicable to human beings or are the attributes associated with “normal” gender and race specific.   

“By remaining unaware of the profound seriousness of the ubiquitous influence, the redundant message and the subliminal impact of advertisements, we ignore one of the most powerful ‘educational’ forces in the culture – one that greatly affects our self-images, our ability to relate to each other, and effectively destroys awareness and action that might help to change that climate” (Kilbourne, 125).

If the purpose of advertisements is to persuade us to buy a product or service, then tapping into our imaginations and inner fantasies should be their most fertile playground. This, again, can be done by assigning gender specific colors, shapes, and imagery – essentially creating a map for our perception. In Reading Images Critically, Douglas Kellner points out the visual choices Marlboro and Virginia Slims chose for their ads. For example, “Marlboro ad draws on images of tradition (the cowboy), hard work…(this cowboy is doing some serious work), caring for animals, and other desirable traits, as if smoking were a noble activity, metonymically equivalent to these other positive social activities”(Kellner 128). In 1983, Virginia Slims ad also attempted to “associate its product with socially desired traits and offer subject positions with which women can identify...The caption, linked to Virginia Slims slogan ‘You’ve come a long way baby’ next to the package of cigarettes, connotes a message of progress, metonymically linking Virginia Slims to the progressive woman and modern living” (Kellner 128).

Becoming increasingly aware of marketing segmentation is taking a step closer to a solution. The solution being: having gender-neutral toys, gender-neutral products, having more diversity in the ads we are exposed to on a daily basis, and including more representation of race, religion, gender, and ethnicity. Perhaps advertisement campaigns such as Always #LikeAGirl are doing good by being that much more analytical of the history of advertisements and their affect on culture and perception. Of course, the ultimate goal of any ad is to encourage consumerism; however, the scale of viewership for an ad is much larger than it’s consumer target - making that ad sell more than just a product: an idea, a value, a concept.

We rarely get to hear kids’ perspective about their consumption behavior; mostly because we think they lack the words to express how they feel or we think we’ll just receive “…because I (don’t) like it.” This video, shown by her parent, filmed Riley expressing her frustration with the gender-specific marketing of the toys section. And while she does express her feelings in a very simple but very expressive manner, her message is right on. Surprisingly, as we get older, the same gender-specific marketing tactics remain perpetual, yet we never seem to have any frustration; in fact, we tend to side with the gender we identify with. This begs the question of whether our lack of frustration is a result of what we “normalized” or that we just stopped questioning.  

Works Cited

Kilbourne, Jean. Beauty and the Beast of Advertising.

Kellner, Douglas. Reading Images Critically - Toward a Postmodern Pedagogy.