March 24, 2014
Advertising Gender Swap
Buzzfeed brings us an interesting video about what happens when you replace women in an ad with a man, playing off of the three main tropes that usually occur in advertising: “pleasing your man” “nerdy guy/hot girl” and “sexualized food”.
I definitely had not seen the original Doritos ad, and it’s kind of awful that the ad in itself looks fake, because of how ridiculous it is. Although I don’t agree with their last comment that “seeing men like this is ridiculous” because there really would need to be several more examples of these reversals, and advertising in general is pretty ridiculous.
Also, what’s wrong with guys being sexy? That’s why the original advertising works – because it’s sexy women. I really get what Buzzfeed is trying to say, that women shouldn’t be oversexualized, and that it is a fairly consistent convention in advertising – and I agree, that sucks – BUT since apparently sex sells and capitalism rules the world, why don’t we just even the playing field with making more sexy guy ads, to even out the sexy girl ones? It’s not the perfect solution, I realize – obviously a world in which objectification just didn’t happen at all would be the ideal, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet as a society – so bring me more shirtless men in a pool of Doritos!
It would be interesting to see the reverse of this experiment, how women put into the roles of men in advertising would affect the overall message, if it would be as much of a strange thing.
Also, what’s wrong with guys being sexy? That’s why the original advertising works – because it’s sexy women. I really get what Buzzfeed is trying to say, that women shouldn’t be oversexualized, and that it is a fairly consistent convention in advertising – and I agree, that sucks – BUT since apparently sex sells and capitalism rules the world, why don’t we just even the playing field with making more sexy guy ads, to even out the sexy girl ones? It’s not the perfect solution, I realize – obviously a world in which objectification just didn’t happen at all would be the ideal, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet as a society – so bring me more shirtless men in a pool of Doritos!
It would be interesting to see the reverse of this experiment, how women put into the roles of men in advertising would affect the overall message, if it would be as much of a strange thing.