Women in advertising

Introduction

Men and women are not the same. It was created this way by nature, and there is nothing wrong with it because they properly complement each other. In society, there are fixed images of men and women's roles that are difficult to change or overcome. Men are typically thought of as strong, resolute, astute, and swift. Female roles are reduced to attractive and enticing things. Advertising reflects not just the state of the global market, but also the trends of modern society and the things that are in demand. Gender preconceptions frequently define the advertising style, and gender stereotypes play a significant part in advertising.

With rare exceptions, men tend to have more prominent societal roles, which is reflected in marketing. In contrast to women, who generally play passive positions as product users, men take authority roles in advertising, either giving examples or expressing their expert judgment.

Advertisement can be considered a barometer of social opinion because it both expresses and shapes society's demands. It is crucial in the promotion of labels and stereotypes. Certain advertisements are targeted at specific social groups. Advertisements with various female characters appeal to various social groups.

In my paper, I'd like to look at how women are portrayed in advertisements, such as as a sex object, a housewife, a submissive, a mother, a professional, or a stupid blonde, in order to analyze women's social positions and perspectives.

Let's look at each form of commercial to see what societal role it plays for women.

Women in advertising

First, and most traditional category of advertisements depicts women as typical housewife, fulfilling the major gender stereotype of the mankind. These characters radiate sweetness, warm-heartedness and passion to house holding. For example, the advertisement of commercially laundry Bryza, underlines the laundry to be totally women 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 and must be interested in laundry and other issued connected with house holding. Another bright example of such an attitude 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 fully women's occupation and men, who help their women about the house, are doing the heroic deed and should be treated as heroes. Examples are multiple 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 bad in being a good housewife or taking care about husband and children. Its bad when all the life is artificially and intentionally centered all around this aspect. In order to understand the accordance of this category to ethical norms, we should define on the ethics first. Ethics, or moral philosophy is defined as a set of regulation, which define right or wrong behaviour. From the ethical point of view, popularising the ideal of house keeping can not be regarded as something wrong. We should look deeper into the root of the problem to see another ethical problem here. Such kind of ads can limit female rights. Voluntary or not, but with the help of these ads socials role of the woman is reduced to the role of typical housewife. All the actions should be agreed with the ethics of the profession.

The role of submissive mother originally arises from the role of housewife. Motherhood is one of main destinations of all women. We all know about this from the childhood. Unfortunately, fatherhood isn't considered to be one of the main social roles of the man. Rising children is considered to be mainly female prerogative. Such an attitude is reflected in the advertisements, where all children are accompanied by their caring and submissive mothers. These are mothers, who make the children ready to school, cook them breakfast, take care about their health, appearance, toys, etc. The chances to see a man in the role of loving father is very small or equals zero. These stereotypes about the role of woman as submissive mother are reflected in ad of Chewi-Quaker. Small 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 very bright example is a Cheetos advertisement, where the mother of four children is driving a family van around the city. These are typical ad when loving and caring mother helps her kids. It's hard for us to imagine any man on the place of the woman in the ads about children. These ads are light and touching, but they serve a bad service persuading the society that taking care about the children is fully feminine responsibility. The social role of woman is changed nowadays and the range of her responsibilities 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 the perverted idea about the female role in the society. Same as the first category, the ads which include the patters of the submissive mothers dont contradict any ethical norms directly as they dont include any lies or violence, but the result can break the ethical norm, breaking the balance between social and personal life of the women.