Difference

Gender, this was my focus. It’s amazing how much gender plays a role in our society, whether it is in advertising or after analyzing data. These are the two points that I seemed to stick to when reviewing the three films. I think it made points that I already knew come to light more and made me realize just exactly how much I would love to change this views for my children. Why do men usually always play the masculine role in ads and why do women always play the victim? These are the questions that I had while watching these films and now, after ripping them apart my questions have been answered.

The first film that I reviewed entitled, Codes of Gender Abridged Version) the curator discusses views written by a gentleman named, Erving Gofffman. Erving discusses commercial realism; his definition of that realism, trying to present to the world the ways things could be real. He dives into the ways men and women are viewed, whether it is in a magazine, billboard or commercial. The video starts off with the character from SNL, It’s Pat! I remember as a child thinking to myself that Pat was a female, but my sister always telling me she was a he. Its interesting Goffman states that there are two categories in society, men and women however transgender is still trying to make their way in life. I didn’t seem to find any transgender advertisements, however I did come across a lot of female ads that left a sour taste in my mouth, not realizing just how women are viewed. The majority of women are laying down in a pose that leaves them defenseless, on a bashful knee bent looking away from the camera. This allows them to become vulnerable and be taken advantage of. In the image that I changed, I took the ad of Paris Hilton and altered it by leaving all the text the same but giving her a larger stomach, bigger arms and a double chin. This shows that no woman that eats fast food is going to look like she does not altered. I feel that altering the image that way gives more truth to the way she would look.

altered

The second video, entitled, Michael Kimmel: On Gender, this gentleman is a professor and collects a lot of data on gender. I found the most interesting part of this video was how discusses how women’s lives have changed and also the four basic rules of manhood. The four ways women’s lives have changed since the 1970’s are:

-Women made gender visible (fundamental building blocks) Gender courses everywhere first seen at college in 1972 at San Diego State University.

-Workplace, largest change in labor/workforce. He asks the audience about how many mothers and grandmothers have had jobs, the hands of the audience went down a lot when asked about grandmother, the older the person the less likely of being a part of the workforce.

-Balance between work and family women had to choose between having a career and having a family, they want to balance career and family

-Sexuality, women today feel entitled to pleasure, they can be horny and be pleasured. Masturbation, people feel so empowered they can just do it themselves.

Finally the four basic rules of manhood are:

No sissy stuff, never do anything that shows femininity

-be a big wheel measure your masculitiy by your paycheck, how much you get paid.

-be a sturdy oak, reliable resembles a tree or a rock.

-give them hell, live life on the edge.

For this video I picked a very sexual American Apparel ad and made it into a modern day farmer. He has chickens in his hands instead of ladies legs. This turns a totally sexual ad into one that people would look at and try and see why he is holding chickens. It makes the viewer wonder.

Lastly, my favorite video that I watched was, Killing Us Softly 4- Advertising’s Image of Women. Jean Kilbourne, she is the creator of this film series. She is one of the best public speakers that I have ever watched and listened to. In this film she discusses ads of women and also men. She states that even though we don’t think that we are affected by ads, sub-consciously we are. She always states it’s hard to be healthy in every way when we are living in a toxic environment of how ads make us feel and change our outlook on our bodies and gender. Being a photography teacher, I do realize how much magazine re-touch images, however I did not know that a lot the ads we see are multiple humans put together to make a “new” person, this was a surprise. She talks about men and how they are usually prim and proper and women are usually viewed as either submissive or dolled up as a little girl, for some reason women are shown a lot as their youth. It’s enjoyable to view, according to data. I focused on the proper gentleman, in the ad un-altered; this is a very sexual and totally unacceptable ad. However with removing the female form and adding a nice glass of red wine with his outfit, I felt it fit better. I also added a slogan and the name of the winery to make it seem classy; this takes on a different view completely.