The Second Sex By Simone De Beauvoir

To analyze the gender stereotypes through the female’s traits and male’s traits in OLX Indonesia television commercials “Household” version, as the main theory, the writer uses Simone de Beauvoir’s critical thinking about the construction of gender by the society in feminine’s point of view and how women become what society wants to be because of the social construction about femininity and masculinity. She asserted that, “One is not born but rather becomes, a woman” (Beauvoir 1953, 273). In her book “The Second Sex”, Beauvoir stated about women that actually become women as what society expect them to be because they are taught to do so; women should be like this and not should be like that. Moreover, it told about how men become the ‘Subject’
and ‘Absolute’ while women are ‘Others’ in social construction. The category of the ‘Subject’ makes men is regarded as part of universality and ‘Others’ makes women are defined by feminine traits ‘against culture, society and rationality and so on are constructed’ (Abbott et al. 2005, 3).