A day in the life

It is 6am when the alarm goes off. Today's the anniversary. The husband and wife get out of bed and have some organic coffee, organic whole wheat toast with organic, free range eggs before their long flight to Paris. Although it is a long flight, they are excited for a chance to get to see Paris again and have a romantic trip. Since they were married 7 years ago, they have both have gotten promotions in their corporate jobs and like to spend their hard earned money lavishly. They grab their Ralph Lauren luggage that the wife lovingly packed because she knows her husband has no idea what to pack and is bound to forget something. They get into the husbands Mercedes on the way to the plane. After boarding and getting to the LA premiere seats, the wife heads to freshen up. She sprays some Dior perfume on her neck garnished with a diamond necklace bought for her birthday. She reapplies her Chanel lipstick and heads back out to her husband. They settle in for the flight and she orders a cosmopolitan while he orders a scotch.  

Playing house

When people view this advertisement, they either think it is a great product that their little girl will love, or an extremely stereotyped and biased ad. This commercial features girls playing house with their Rose Petal Cottage. Many people would say that it enforces the stereotype that women must be in the kitchen and this type of product is conditioning girls for that. However, I think that this thinking is wrong. In a way, it is a vicious circle. Throughout generations of advertising, us, our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents, etc. have been seeing that pink is for girls and blue is for boys. Playing with dolls and houses is for girls and playing with cars and army men is for boys. It is hard to break this thinking suddenly. Our culture is so ingrained with this thinking that it is most often not a conscious decision that the girl wants the pink, it is just what she wants. Manufacturers create products that sell, and for girls it is products like the Rose Petal Cottage. Sure, it is nice to say that they should start creating gender neutral products, but this is much easier said than done. Gender specificity exists in all aspects of life, and the biggest thing is that important to remember is to be inclusive. If a boy wants to play with these pink "girlie" products, he should not be ashamed of it and he should be allowed to.

Sharks are friends, not food

For our political campaign, my group focused on a topic that is not super well known. This is the act of cutting fins off sharks to make soup. The fins are cut off the sharks when the sharks are still alive and the sharks are generally just thrown back into the ocean because they have no need for them. The shark population is decreasing rapidly because of this industry. However, this industry is extremely profitable in the countries that consume it. The biggest issue we needed to focus on was to bring awareness because this is not common knowledge in the US. We wanted to use social media presence to help bring this awareness. We would host events on Facebook, post facts on Twitter, and use Instagram to post facts and pictures showing that sharks aren’t all bad and don’t deserve to be killed so much. By using these platforms, we reach a wide market. People will take action to help end the violence.

Rainforest Alliance

The Rainforest Alliance uses digital media heavily to help with their cause of maintaining biodiversity and sustainability. They regularly post on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. They have a blog that they update regularly with articles about sustainability and ethical farming. They post YouTube videos that help show information that a consumer might not normally get, such as posting a video of the man behind your chocolate. On YouTube they post many videos to help people understand why they are important. They have a video with their call to action of just following the signs and helping the environment by just doing what you can.

They have their own seal that they place on food and other items to certify that they follow their standards. By using social media including YouTube, they can reach a broad spectrum of people who might be interested. They can educate many people by having such a large presence. They make their ideals know easily and thoroughly through their use of social media and the internet. 

It going to be legen....dary!

The show How I Met Your Mother reflects gender diversity but does not really reflect race diversity. In the show, there are two main women and three main men. They reflect a wide range of attitudes: Ted is a hopeless romantic searching for a soulmate; Marshall is the loveable goofy guy who knows how to treat women; Barney is a jokester and a womanizer who sleeps with any woman he can; Lily is a slightly feminist woman who has some traditional roles; and Robin, who is a bit of a tomboy and has a hard time with emotions. All five of the main characters are white and straight. However, there is some diversity in the show, as Barney’s brother who is in a few episodes is black and gay. The characters treat him no different because he is black and gay, however, which puts forth a good attitude about it. It is important to have different races in shows because it helps to normalize it. When the group in HIMYM treats the gay, black brother the same as everyone else, it encourages everyone to treat gays and blacks the same way.

There are definitely racial and gender stereotypes in the show. Barney, for example, epitomizes the jerky womanizer character. There is also a Mexican woman who works in the cafeteria of Marshall and Barney’s work who is stereotypical. She cannot speak English and just serves food. This perpetuates that Mexicans should work in the kitchen. They also have an Indian cab driver, Ranjeet, who although he is their friend and their go-to cab/limo driver, serves as a stereotype. It is stereotyped that Indians drive cabs.

Men never listen

Gender stereotyping usually assumes something about a whole gender. It determines what they like to do, what they should be doing, how they act, etc. In this ad, we see the text “Men never listen. Still it’s nice to know they can.” This ad is drawing on the fact that women think the men in their lives don’t listen to them. However, because they are wearing these hearing aids we know they CAN listen, they just still choose not to. This is wrong because the ad is saying that all men don’t listen, and the especially don’t listen to their partners. Not all men are like this, but because the ad is saying that they are, it is perpetuating a stereotype.  

When advertisers create ads such as this, they further the divide between the genders. They should be focusing on making both genders equal and not putting men or women into strict groups. It is harmful to both genders when they make ads that promote gender stereotypes.

Sweet as Candy

In advertising, companies often use race to try to prove a point about their product. Unfortunately, this often ends up being racist. In my opinion, telling a story using race is acceptable as long as the stereotypes aren’t negative. Often when advertisers use race, they use extremely offensive stereotypes about the race. Depending on the product they are selling, one race may need to be targeted more and therefore the ads will feature that race more. Whether or not this ad is acceptable depends upon the racial stereotype they choose to go with and the inclusiveness of the ads. In the example we looked at in class with Levy’s Rye bread, they used racial stereotyping in a positive way to illustrate a point. In this day and age, companies are expected to use diversity in their ads but are simultaneously expected to not use stereotypes of any kind. Often, when we think about racism in ads, we think only of the minority races being stereotyped: blacks, Native Americans, Asians. We often don’t think that whites can be racially stereotyped also. Whites can be illustrated as red necks or hillbillies and these ads would be racist also. When a company illustrates the negative ideas of a race, that is when the stereotyping is wrong.

Racism in advertising is not a thing of the past. In this advertisement for American Apparel, we see obvious racism. The woman’s lips are large and bright pink in contrast to her dark skin tone, which brings you back to all the exaggerated features that white people used to assign to blacks. We can see by this ad that some current ads use racism that isn't even subtle or accidental.

I do think companies have a moral obligation to try to keep racism out of their ads, much as they should keep other negative stereotypes out of their ads. They are the ones who really determine what people see on a day-to-day basis because advertising is so prevalent in our society. Because of this, they should encourage acceptance in their ads because they have the largest sphere of influence on society.