Rom-coms, puppets and cute dresses for girls, action films, cars and beer for boys – preconceived notions about gender have persisted until today, and while they are visible in every part of life, they are exceptionally prominent in advertisements that result out of the concept of gendered consumerism.
While Jane Nicholas chooses to focus on the connection between “women’s bodies, film, and the car” (Nicholas 2015, 184) in order to investigate “their cultural value as representations of feminine modernities” (Nicholas 2015, 185), she hints at the impact pre-conceived gender notions and the desire for “things and images” that accompany the mere act of purchasing goods (Nicholas 2015,185).
Neil Sutherland’s article investigates the rise of different forms of media during the 20th century and its impacts on children and young adults and their entry into the world of consumerism, something that companies picked up on, such as radio stations who reacted to their younger audience with “a rapid extension of commercial radio programming directly focused on the adolescent consumers.” (Sutherland 2002, 28) Somebody who probably owed at least part of its massive popularity to the development of smaller and cheaper radio sets that enabled younger consumer to acquire their own is famous Elvis Presley, as Sutherland mentions. The famous musician can act as an interesting example for the idea that consumers want images as much as products that I have established earlier with help from Nicholas’ article.
Torontoist journalist Kevin Plummer recapped in his piece “Historicist: Elvis in Toronto, 1957”, the review written by Toronto Star music critic Hugh Thomson who emphasised the popstars focus on using his body as a means of seduction and concluding that Elvis’ “basic theme and appeal were sex, which [he] lays on with the subtlety of a bulldozer in mating season” (link to the article to be found under References), therefore using the image of sex, seduction, sensuality to appeal to mostly female audiences, a strategy that is extraordinarily often found in the music industry even today.
As I mentioned in the beginning, the strategy of gendering products is still prominent in today’s advertising industry. It is still a long way to go to finally erase gendered products, but there are steps being made towards gender neutrality in targeted advertising. A recent example for this is Mattel’s a recent example being the toy company Mattel that put it’s first-ever boy in a commercial for a Barbie doll created in collaboration with fashion label Moschino in November 2015 and sparked a discussion about gendered products.
The question that follows this, however, is -if companies decide to emphasise gender neutrality with the advertisement of their products- do they decide to do so because of their own beliefs in that gendered consumerism needs to be dismissed? Or is it more likely because they speculate that the new millennial generation, to which a blurring of the gender lines seems more important than ever, is going to decide to go with the company mirroring their own values and beliefs once they are going to enter the market as parents themselves?
References:
Nicholas, “Modern Girls and Machines: Cars, Projectors and Publicity,” in The Modern Girl: Feminine Modernities, The Body, and Commodities in the 1920s, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015: 184-210.
Sutherland, “Popular Media in the Culture of English-Canadian Children in the Twentieth Century,” Historical Studies in Education, 14, 1 (Spring, 2002): 1-33.
http://thegbrief.com/articles/gendered-products-get-negative-responses-from-millennials-617
http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/barbie-ad-starring-boy-is-moschinos-not-mattels-1.3325364
http://torontoist.com/2013/04/historicist-elvis-in-toronto-1957/
