Images in advertising, sexism
Today I decided to teach my sister to recognise sexism in ads. Fine if she loves all the fashion magazines, but enough with the unexamined reading of them. I pointed out the women who typically had their mouths open, looking through their lashes or out the sides of their eyes or anything but directly at you. The ads which focussed on the women despite naked men in them. I pointed out that a lot of things weren’t inherently sexist, but the biased use of things was. We went from ad to ad, pointing it out, looking for things. She’d find some, or bring one to ask me what I thought of it. I complained about the idea of the [whatever] making up your identity — dissolving into makeup, not existing without the right glasses, hidden faces, etc.
A Lacoste ad, she said, wasn’t sexist. And I said no, the first one (a 20s-ish picture of a man jumping) was not. But look at the related, modern one. A woman — but unlike the man, she wasn’t moving. She was just in the air. Men *do*, in ads; women just are.
At dinner, she pointed out a fashion spread. Look, she said, all the men are moving, doing gymnastics, while the women are just watching them. I feel much better about her reading these magazines now.
August 18th, 2006 at 11:34 pm
Wow, it’s like evidence of eye-opening. Always good.
August 19th, 2006 at 10:40 am
I’m hoping this translates into some good project for her for school, too. There are a lot of ways you could do it — an art project, switching the boy and girl places? A science fair project, asking how people responded to ads with boys doing girl things etc. An English project, so on.
But even then, she’ll be unable to *stop* noticing these things, and eventually she’ll be unable not to tell her friends.
August 20th, 2006 at 11:36 am
Yes, that is how it goes. Once someone points these things out, you start noticing it everywhere ….
Good work!