I'm sure everyone has seen this advertisement by now. If not, you probably should have been spending the last year or so hiding out in a tunnel somewhere in the Afghan border.
In any case, this advertisement is an excellent example of the vast amount of audio-visual material that inform and reinforce the perception that men and women are different. In this case, what gets them screaming like rabid Twilight fangirls catching a glimpse of Robert Pattinson. With such heavy promotion (overt or otherwise) of such a viewpoint, it makes one wonder if the "innate" differences we seem to recognize instinctively is actually real, or just a manifestation of the false consciousness. Hohoho.
I'm very sure though, that Heineken doesn't make me jump for joy.
you're quite right that popular mass media actively and even purposely reinforce gender stereotypes. Although it's all tongue and cheek, the other point is that gender stereotypes sell products. The question is, why?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment! Thought I left something out, and yes, turned out I was right. Anyway I do think that it's done, or overdone so much because of two points: Firstly, it IS that important to both men and women, be it the hunt for a suitable "other" or just the fulfillment of certain physical/biological needs/wants; Secondly, because the physiological differences between men and women are just too obvious, and therefore provide an easy issue to play up under the guise of gender.
ReplyDeletePerhaps it is simply due to the fact that we identify with the stereotypes and agree with them as they are reinforcing something that we actually believe is 'right'. What perhaps goes unnoticed is that we actually learned what is the 'right' behavior for the appropriate gender from those who came before us. What gives them the right to decide what type of behavior is acceptable and which are not? Who has the right to decide what is 'right' and 'wrong' then? Do power relations come into consideration here?
ReplyDeleteJust a thought :)
I suppose I am also thinking along the same lines. Gender stereotypes sell products because the customer identifies with the stereotypes projected from the marketing. And the decision about right and wrong, well, the customer inevitably supports the propagation of these stereotypes by buying.
ReplyDeleteBut, I do believe that there can be changes. These stereotypes are not permanently fixed although they tend to be hard to remove. For example, in the world of fashion, I believe there is a large room of flexibility.
Then again, recently, I was shopping with an aunt for baby-clothing in Hong Kong. There's a distinct dichotomy between clothes for girls and for boys: pinks on side, blues on the other.
To say that we identify with them is perhaps a tad simplistic, since it begs the question: the chicken first or the egg? That is, did these social "gender" norms exist first, which the media then seized on to propagate; or vice versa? Maybe even a mix of both?
ReplyDelete