Hello and welcome back to Advertising and Society. Today I'd like to take up the topic of what ads teach us about race, class, gender and sexuality. Now in the social sciences and humanities, this is one of the biggest questions that's asked about advertising from a social-cultural point of view. The idea is that ads represent race and class and gender and sexuality in various ways. And that we can look into the world of advertising and understand a great many things about popular cultural representations of these major social dimensions. I want to begin by calling some attention to the definition of terms that I'll be using. And that are widely used in general in discussing this whole area. First of all, there is a term gender. Secondly, sex. And thirdly, sexism. Now sometimes these terms are used in rather confusing ways. Especially, outside the university. If you look, for example, at this page, which is a copy of the driver's license identification card application for the state of Virginia. You'll see that in the red circle, there is the question of check one for gender, and the offers are male or female. By contrast, the US passport renewal application, inside the circle here the question is sex, and the answers are M or F. So what we're seeing today is that the word gender is sometimes used to refer that sex is sometimes used to refer to it. And in general, it's almost as though someone said, gender is the new way of saying what we used to call sex. But I think in our case and in the social sciences and humanities in general, we need to add some more precision to this. And there is real utility in distinguishing between two ideas that lie behind, this entire discussion. First, let's look at, the question of what sex is, in a definitional sense. I'm going to use it to refer to biologically based differences between human individuals. Usually, this meals, means male or female. It can sometimes, of course, refer to inter-sex people. But in general, this is the distinction between biological maleness and biological femaleness. Now, gender by congest is the socially defined differences between men and women or males and females. And here are the terms masculine and feminine come into play. Because these are ideas within a culture about the appropriate kind of behavior for males and appropriate kind of behavior for females. Namely, what is masculine at the end? How does it operate in their culture? And what is femininity? And how does it operate? Now thirdly, the issue of sexism is also at play in all of this. And what it refers to, is in a similar kind of way to the notion of racism, it refers to unequal treatment of males and females. And that happens a great deal, in the world of advertising as it does in culture in general. Now, when we get down to the specifics of advertising and how we relate these concepts of sex, gender, and sexism to it. There are three major areas of concern that we need to take up and pay some attention to. First, there is the question of gender representations. Secondly, there is sexist representations. And thirdly, there is the whole issue of using sexual imagery to sell. Now, let's look specifically at what's encompassed within each of these general rubrics. Gender representations might be specified as how is masculinity and femininity depicted in the world of advertising. Look with me at this particular advertising image. It shows a boy and a girl. They are male and female. Masculine and feminine. And what we see here are some really major differences between the way that the boy is represented and his masculinity and the girl and her femininity. First, note the difference between the colors that they're wearing. The boy is in muted colors. Blues. The girl is in bright colors. Yellows and reds. And there are other things as well. The boy is bigger. He's the one with the stick in his hand, instructing the girl. She's looking on. She's got her head covered. She's wearing extra clothes that seems to protect her from the elements. Whereas he's much more exposed. So his bigness, his directing, his being in charge, and the way that he's shown here in terms of the depiction and colors. All of these things point to a masculine attitude about this guy versus a feminine attitude about her. And you can see this throughout the history of advertising, especially the 20th century American advertising. You can see lots and lots of ways in which similar kinds of things were used to describe men versus women and talk about masculinity and what it is and femininity and what it is. So remember that we're talking about the culturally defined differences. Not the things that are biological or innate. Now, the second area is sexist representations. And the questions here, might all center around something like are males and females being treated unequally? And you can look at a lot of ads and see how males and females are indeed being treated equally. Here's a rather simple straightforward, animation. It shows what probably is a family. There are four people here, a man, a woman, a boy and a girl. And you can see them, out at the end of a pier. Note that both the woman and the girl are looking on while the little boy is fishing and the man is playing with his telephone to remotely close his garage door at home that he seems to have forgotten. So the boys are active and the girls are passive. This is the kind of unequal treatment that we see in advertising. Where certain activities are given to men and other activities are given to women. This could include things also about how work in the house is done, who does the cooking, who does the sitting at the table and waiting for the food to be ready. All kinds of things like this would be ways in which males and females are treated differently. The third area using sexual imagery to sell, and using sex to link to brand identities, comes up in a variety of ways. Here's an example of a really overt use of sexuality to sell. This woman is in a very exposed position. This very center of the ad is her crotch area. So what we see here is a provocative, sexual ad and it's advertising a fashion line. And yet, it is sex brought heavily into the selling process. The question whether this works or not is another matter. It's simply the issue here that it is often tied to advertising in an effort to draw in the attention of consumers. And potentially to persuade them to buy particular products. Now gender representations when this occurs and when we look at how masculinity versus femininity is represented. We see in general that masculine attribute include such things as powerful, strong, dominant, controlled emotions, and so forth. You can see this in this image for example. This man is rather stoic. He stands in Venice, in the Fiasco de San Marco. And he's there without a smile on his face, looking very businesslike, looking very authoritative, looking very much in charge. Or this man, a younger man in a casual situation. He's the one who's wading in the river. He's got the woman on his back. He's the alpha, she's the beta. he's in charge, she's being passive. So these kinds of things about masculinity and the way it's represented as powerful, dominant, and so forth. Are characteristic of American advertising and have been for a very long time. By contrast, feminine attributes are such things as being beautiful, weak, submissive, emotional and so forth. And if you look just at this ad, we see this one where the woman doesn't look so much in charge, as she looks passive. It's even called Bed Head. She's there with a sort of sexual countenance to her. Or this one, where the woman is in all bright colors, she's smiling, she's happy. She's not doing anything of any great importance other than just being good looking. So we see real contrast between the ways that men and women are represented. How masculinity and femininity is presented in the world of advertising. Turning to the area of sexist representations, we see such things as men always being in charge. In this slide, for example, you see that the man is driving the car. The woman is the passenger. This is the kind of thing that's meant by that. This is the unequal treatment of men and women. We also see women usually shown in their roles as mothers and housewives. Here we see the mother, being in charge of feeding the children and worrying about their health and their strength and so forth. Or men always depicted as active and intelligent, while women are shown as passive and weak. In this simple example, where the two are busy playing a game of Scrabble. It's the man who's looking upwards in the dictionary while the woman looks on. So he's the one who's got the pencil. He's the one, who checks the words out in the dictionary. And she sits by in a more passive manner. Now sex to sell, is a very different area. It's very common in advertising. And it has been especially common throughout the 20th century in American advertising. I don't think there's any better example that something like this. Where the women, carry on their bodies the logo of the beer brand. They are good looking, very attractive women by the cultural standards of America. And they and the product are merged one, and into another. And so the idea of Budweiser Beer and sexy women is ingrained in this kind of advertisement which is clearly using sex to sell. Now here is an example. Not a real ad, but a parody of an ad for the same sort of thing, showing a little male flesh as opposed to female flesh. I find this amusing even though it's not a, a real ad, because it follows the absolute series. And it talks about the guy being an absolute hunk. And look how it is placed the bottle and making it very suggestive of his genitals. So these ways in which we would see, sex being used to interest consumers and potentially to sell products. Now in, the video I want to show you now, you'll see a clear example of how sex is being used to sell. So this is all about sex. It's all about selling. It's about linking the two in this particular commercial. [SOUND] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> Is that a great new Pepsi can or what? >> Introducing a whole new way to look at Pepsi and Diet Pepsi. >> It's beautiful. >> For more information on this particular topic, you can consult AD Text where you'll find some additional articles. They're listed here. And these will help you understand this topic in more detail if you'd like to follow up on it. >> This course is a collaborative venture of Duke University and the Advertising Educational Foundation.
