Gender & Media

Gender, Media, and American Culture
When you hear the words Gender and Media, what comes to your mind? Is it certain types of people? Do you automatically think of television, radio, or magazines? In today’s culture, money is the key to success. And that is the motto marketing businesses lives by, they use gender, and the media to their advantage to get us people to buy their products. In one magazine that I was looking through called IN Style Magazine, which is intended for female viewers around their early twenties to mid-to-late forties, a lot of their advertisements and pictures were about men, whether it was a males cologne, or how to please and make a man happy rather than what's in style or the latest news about a celebrities life. In this magazine, I came across two ads, one about a men’s Dolce & Gabbana cologne, and another about a Newport cigarette ad that demonstrate male as having more power than females.
Generally, females are more submissive to males, and this is because males are known as the more dominate gender. Gender stereotypes are frequently known as woman having to abide by any adult male figure, and that we as women have to do whatever the man says, stay home and cook, clean and raise the children, while the man or husband is the “breadwinner” and protector of the household, pays the pills and puts food in the house and that’s all to be expected. In both of the advertisements, it shows one women being wrapped in the arms of a man as if he is showing control over the woman, and the other showing the woman feeding the man. The only difference between the two ads is that, the woman in the ad about the Newport cigarettes doesn’t quite look like she’s being forced to feed him while in the cologne ad she looks as if she’s being forced to pose the way she is or to abide by him.
To begin with, I’d like to start off with the advertisement about the Dolce & Gabbana cologne. In this ad, I noticed her facial expression and then the male models position over her. He looks as if he is trying to protect her from something as well as showing his dominance over her by wrapping his muscular arm around her in a protective manor and grabbing her by her stomach. He looks as though he is showing her off as his prize because, he is not covering any cleavage, nor her genital area, but making sure the world knows that she belongs to him in a sort of “look but don’t touch” domineer. She looks as if she is uncomfortable but is sort of dealing with it in a way. Her body language is open, but attempting to cover her body parts with her arm. As well as her facial expression looking unhappy with the position that they are in.
I contemplate the target of this ad was directed to male viewers mostly, but since it was in a female oriented magazine, I personally think the advertisement company’s strategy was to get women thinking this cologne will make their man/boyfriend/husband protective over them, they might reflect that this ad could be them in the picture instead of the models who are more than likely not in a relationship and most likely have not met prior to this photo shoot, but the goal is to give the viewers the impression that they are, so they will buy their product. Society believes that if you can buy something in hopes of getting a fantasy outcome, then it’s is worth the money which is why people get plastic surgery for example.
In the next advertisement about Newport Cigarettes, it shows a happy man, and a happy woman, and the woman is feeding the man while smiling really big, showing that she has no problem taking care of him or takes joy in making him smile. And in big bold letters it says “pleasure!” Giving people the impression that this is what pleasure looks like. I believe that the target market for this ad was intended on making women feel that catering to the man in their life gives them as well as her pleasure. As if their husband/boyfriend will not be happy or isn’t fully capable to feed himself. In the ad it shows her feeding him cake, which in its entirety has nothing to do with cigarettes I must add. Although, it shows her feeding him the cake, I don’t think this portrays what the media thinks of gender, I think it just shows her devotion to him on her own terms.
A few things both ads have in common are that the women are passive when it comes to their man, the women are feeding him and the other is being overshadowed by her man. Although, both of the ads show signs of femine weakness, it one is more potent than the other meaning, the cologne ad shows more male dominance than the cigarette ad. The Lady in the cigarette ad looks like she is enjoying herself rather than the other woman. I do not think that the target audiences for both advertisements are the same though. I think the Dolce & Gabbana cologne advertisement is for younger adults and the Newport cigarette advertisement is for older people in their late thirties and forties.
Even though they equally have their differences, both of the ads Dolce & Gabbana, and Newport cigarettes, both show that the media depicts male figures as having more authority over women, and more often show this instead of showing a strong willed, working women. But they individually have their differences; it all just depends on how culture perceives it.