They are so sexist. They always portray the housewife with her children. (think: clothes, laundry, and food commercials) While there are still housewives (who work really hard) that's not the norm anymore. Why can't advertisers understand that?
I think commercials do their fair share of portraying the 'strong working woman' as well. Either way, it's bullshit. I could get into the sexism against men in commercials as well, but I'm not sure how that would go over.
Yea commercials are all about making people buy the product. They'll do whatever they have to. Although the "housewife" type may not be the norm now, apparently showing it on the commercials gets their product sales up. :/ That says a lot about our society I think; I guess it is appealing. . .
You'll notice that any commercial which features a couple always portrays the woman as the intelligent, reasonable one, while the man is cast as the helpless one who needs to be led. There are do many commercials where the man is about half a second from fucking something up, then his wife/girlfriend comes and saves him. Women are never portrayed this way, because that would be sexist. The same way that if there's a white guy and a black guy, the white guy's always clueless, and the black guy's always telling him what's going on. It doesn't really matter. I hardly ever watch TV anyway, so this is drawn from the time when I did. Just something I noticed.
People still watch commercials?Why?--I don't find them sexist,I just find them very stupid.Almost like they are made by 9 year olds for 9 year olds.I rarely even view comercials anymore--------I used to actually like commercials when I was a kid in the 1970s.The commercials they 'used' to make were often clever and cute-plus they showed about 1/3 the amount they do nowadays.--Now when a commercial comes on I switch the channel then switch back 5 minutes later.Mostly though I view NON-commercial tv.
It only makes sense to advertise to the housewife and for commercials to show the housewife because there's more housewives than stay-at-home dads, and the "working woman" is often a part-time employee at a fast food restaurant or Wal-Mart, so she's still at home more than her husband. While women may enjoy picturing the working woman as a fifty-hour-a-week white collar worker, this is more often not the case, as women fill the majority of the low-end jobs that seldom work even a forty-hour week, so she's still, on average, going to be at home more than he will be. It makes sense for advertisers to portray whatever is in greater number. Further, women will probably react better to women advertising products to them than having a man standing there advertising to her, and if she's a real feminist then she'd probably complain that they gave the commercial job to a man rather than a woman, because a real feminist is good about twisting stuff around like that. It's really a lose-lose for the advertiser here, because they could be frowned upon for depicting women like this all the time, or they could be frowned upon for not employing a woman to advertise to her.
I think portraying the "good housewife" in commercials for cleaning product, laundry, and food commercials is simply aiming their advertising at the people who are most likely to buy that product. And as sexist as that seems, generally women do. The truly sexist and annoying commercials are those for axe or just about any mens deoderant product, and certain fast food commercials where slutty women are throwing themselves at loserish men.
you're so right about it the one commercial that pisses me the hell off is this one about like....i don't even know what it's called as it fills me with rage and i don't remember those details, but it's some product that makes guys grow hair and they go on about how it'll make women like them and some guys' WIFE is saying like "oh he looks so handsome NOW' and it makes me SO MAD. i mean, i get all in a feminist rage and turn green and smash things pretty often, but it definitely happens to men too and and it seems like with women, they'll do it constantly and subtly in like, everything. but for men they'll be straight up like YOU'RE UGLY, YOU NEED MONEY AND A NICE CAR AND A FULL HEAD OF HAIR THAT ISN'T GRAY, AND LOTS OF MUSCLES OR YOU ARE UNACCEPTABLE. it's so unfair and stupid.
Advertisements portray the majority and the stereotyped - they are not interested with individuality or diversity, and frequently discriminate against the minority to relate to a majority (i.e relate to the majority of people who'll be spending!). It's unlikely you'll see diverse multi-cultural society portrayed in advertisement because the advertisers aren't interested.
I don't like the fact that these "housewives" are not typical housewives to begin with. Any working mom or stay-at-home-mom does not run around with perfect hair, clothes, and make-up as she hangs the laundry and does dishes. It puts out unreasonable expectations on a woman's appearance. But.....that's in all commercials anyway.
