Women in advertising

Women in advertising

Men and women are different, it was designed by nature like this, and there is nothing wrong about it as they supplement each other. There are stable images of men and women roles in the society, which are arduous to change. Men are regarded as strong and brave, intelligent and quick, and female characters are reduced to pretty and sexy objects. Advertising reflects not only the situation on the world market but also the tendencies of modern society and things, which are in the requisition. Gender plays a vital role in advertising, and gender stereotypes define the advertising style. Men carry more critical social functions, with very few exceptions, and this is reflected in the advertisements. Men play roles of authorities in the commercials who either give examples of express their professional opinion in contrast to women, who play submissive roles of users of the products. Advertisement can be called a measure of social view as it expresses the needs of the society, but at the same time, it also forms it. It plays a vital role in promoting labels and stereotypes. 

Certain ads are targeted to certain social groups, which display different female characters, appeal to various social groups. In this article, I would like to study different approaches to the woman in advertising, such as treating women as sex objects, housewife, submissive, mother, professional, dumb blonde, to analyze the social position of women and their perspectives. Let's focus on each type of advertisement to study the social role it gives to women. Most traditional category of advertisements depicts women as a typical housewife, fulfilling the dominant gender stereotype of humankind. These characters radiate sweetness, warm-heartedness, and passion for householding. For example, the advertisement for laundry bryza, underlines the laundry to be women's occupation. In the advertisement, man is singing about children and stains and then addresses women with the words now you have bryza. Such an attitude implies that only women can be interested in laundry and other issues connected with householding. Another splendid example of such an approach is an ad of Virginia Slims. 

This advertisement states, the sexiest move that a guy can make in the house is cleaning up. Such an attitude presupposes that cleaning is women's occupation, and men, who help their women about the place, are doing the heroic deed and should be treated as heroes. Examples are many, and we can calculate up to a dozen of advertisement, where women act as typical housewives during one commercial block. Such an attitude humiliates female dignity and strengthens social stereotype about the woman as a housewife. There is nothing wrong with being a good housewife or taking care of their husband and children. It's terrible when all life is artificially and intentionally centered all around this aspect. To understand the accordance of this category to ethical norms, we should define the ethics first. Ethics or moral philosophy is defined as a set of regulations, which translates right or wrong behavior. From an ethical perspective, popularising the idea of housekeeping can not be regarded as something wrong. We should look deeper into the root of the problem to see another ethical dilemma here. Such kind of ads can limit female rights.

Voluntary or not, but with the help of these ads, the role of the social of the woman is reduced to the position of a typical housewife.All the actions should be agreed with the ethics of the profession. The role of a submissive mother arises from the work of the housewife. Motherhood is one of the leading destinations of all women. We know about this from childhood. Unfortunately, fatherhood isn't considered to be one of the prominent social roles of the man. Raising children is deemed to be a female prerogative. Such an attitude is reflected in the advertisements, where their caring and submissive mothers accompany all children. These are mothers, who make the children ready to school, cook them breakfast, take care of their health, appearance, toys. The chances to see a man in the role of a loving father is very small or equals zero. These stereotypes about the part of women as the submissive mother are reflected in the ad of Chewi-Quaker. 

Tiny girl is worried about new surrounding after moving to another school but becomes popular when finds Chewis and messages from her loving mother in her lunch box. Another shining example is a Cheetos advertisement, where the mother of four children is driving a family van around the city. These are typical ads when a loving and caring mother helps her kids. It's hard for us to imagine any man in the place of the woman in the announcements about children. These ads are light and touching, but they serve a bad service persuading the society that taking care of the children is feminine responsibility. The social role of a woman is changed nowadays, and the range of her duties goes much further than housework or raising children. In many families, women work on a par with men or even more, but old social stereotypes are still alive and still give a perverted idea about the female role in society. Same as the first category, the ads, which include the patters of the submissive mothers, don't contradict any ethical norms as they don't have any lies or violence. Still, the result can break the moral standard, breaking the balance between the social and personal life of the women.