Since we watched a video yesterday about yogurt and women getting targeted by the marketing people, I decided to look up other products that are targeting women. And these were some of the articles I ran across.
Tobacco industry targeting women
In this page, there is a picture of a woman in a superhero outfit, and the title reads, "We make Virginia Slims especially for women because they are biologically superior to men."
Pasted from : http://tobaccodocuments.org/pollay_ads/Virg16.18.html?ocr_position=hide_ocr
The second page that I found features a woman smoking a cigarette. She looks like she is a successful woman because of the atire that she is wearing ( formal business suit). The title for this picture reads, "Here's to women who can light their own cigarette."
Pasted from : http://tobaccodocuments.org/pollay_ads/Wins13.13.html?ocr_position=hide_ocr
The Cigarette companies do not want ot show that their product kills, but just wants to target women in a way that seems like they are being impowered by smoking. Is that fair?
The next place where I found women being targeted are cotton commercials.
From the article itself,
"Women buy over 80 percent of all apparel and home furnishings, and many of life's firsts happen to women between the ages of 18 and 34. They often get their first job and their first apartment, get married, have their first baby and buy their first house during this period,” Worsham says. “Each of these major events involves a heightened interest in learning new things and in purchasing textile products.”
The two new “Feel of Cotton” commercials, which premiered Presidents' Day weekend during the Olympics, feature people at work, and at play in a hotel setting, dressed in fashionable, dressy casual cotton clothing.
Using a real office and hotel, instead of a studio set, allows Cotton Incorporated to showcase a wide variety of different people all in the same kind of dressy casual cotton wear, and all dancing. Because clothing is a form of self-expression, the creators of the commercials pushed that idea of self-expression through dance."
Pasted from : http://westernfarmpress.com/mag/farming_feel_cotton_ads/
Why is this a problem? I actually saw similarities in things the yogurt lady said, and what this article was talking about. The main point of this article was that women are getting targeted by commercials because all the company wants to do is promote their products in such a way that women can automatically relate to it. People love being comfortable, and by portraying that women can wear comfortable clothes anywhere if they wear cotton, it is easy for women to fall victim to that mindset. I am not saying every women on th face of the earth would fall for this marketing scam, but if people can relate to something, that is more likely going to be in their mind, and even persuade them to buy cotton.
The list of products goes on an on. But my question is why women? Does society consider us weak that we can be exploited that easily? Whatever society thinks of women, I think we need to change the way we are viewed.
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4 comments:
I think that this post brings up a good point, one that is pushed aside in the modern world of advertisement. I will admit that we have come a long way in woman's rights, but we still have quite a ways to go.
The problem is that men and much of the industrial and homemaking world, can't see woman as equal. So in advertising, certain portrayals may not seem offensive in the industry or appear at first glance to have any particular meaning, but a lot can be said in the images of advertising, and much of the time it can be seen as offensive to women, or as if women are being used like props.
For example: there is an advertisement for watches on a New York city bus that shows a woman "tied" up in watches with nothing else on... She is bound by the watches. We are not supposed to be in "bondage" anymore and we are not all that helpless.
I think there is still that image of women, where they are considered the weak part of humanity, a lower then human weak genetic fluke that can be beautiful, but helpless, and needy. They are constantly being seen as objects for men to look at.
Again we have made progress but not as much as we should have by now. And objectifying men to make the sides equal is not helping, it is just treating them like objects, but not solving the problem.
People including women are not objects, are not slaves to the cravings of the public, and they are certainly capable of doing everything a man can do.
But the problem doesn't just lie with the men and the public eye, the women are allowing this portrayal to continue, and sometimes even encourage it, so until we can learn to respect ourselves how can we expect the world to think otherwise.
I think many commericials target women because women in general like to shop more than men do. There are usually two types of women, the dependent housewives and the independent women. In both cases, these women like to spend their money on products, the only difference is whose money they're spending. For the housewives, what else can they do besides cleaning the house, taking care of their kids? Shop of course. As the for independent women, they would naturally spend their hard earned money on products for themselves. I think it's the connection between women and shopping that allows so many advertisements to be targetted toward women.
I'm at a loss as to what this has to do with poetry, but if you're interested in the sociology of advertising, I highly recommend the blog Sociological Images.
Of course, gendered marketing is also aimed at men. Men's beauty products, for example, are marketed in a hilarious way.
I agree with Jennifer here- i think more shopping ads are targeted toward women solely because stereotype states that women like to shop more than men. Then next question becomes why is that the accepted stereotype? I dont think is because women are considered weaker than men, but because it's actually a truth. Stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason, after all- because they're true.
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