Advertising Media Identification - Essay Example

Prof’s Media plays a significant role in gendering children, but also represent the desires of children themselves to be gendered. This essay examines two advertisements for closely related products: Lego, and “Lego Friends,” a variant aimed at girls. It will argue that these ads, in addition to the products themselves, reinforce traditional gender roles in a variety of ways. These include future employment of the children, and the importance and nature of social interaction, which varies significantly between the two advertisements based on gender. Gender has long been something that has been of greatest concern to advertisers and to the advertising consuming public. It is of concern to advertisers because it is an incredibly important part of identity, and advertisers need to tap into identity needs to understand how to best sell to the public. It is of great concern for the public, however, because the public wants to be able to resist advertisers having undue influence on the development of those identities. These concerns are especially prevalent in the case of advertising for children. For some time the main concern of gender advertising has been associated with the main concern for advertising for adults: body image. Children’s advertisers tended to fall into the same techniques as advertisers for adults do: portraying “limited diversity in physical attributes” – usually meaning body type and skin color (Napoli and Murgolo-Poore, 2003, pp. 60). But an emerging trend, demonstrated by two advertisements for Lego products, traditional Lego marketed towards boys and a new line, “Lego Friends,” marketed towards girls, indicate that advertisers are creating and upholding gender stereotypes and expectations in both work that is acceptable of each gender and what kinds of social interaction should be the most prominent for each gender. The two advertisements were for very similar products, at least superficially, and likewise, at least superficially maintained very similar narratives. Each ad begins with two people who are apparently close and want to play together – a father-son pair in the Lego advertisement, and what appears to be either a sister-sister pair or a friend-friend pair in the “Lego Friends” advertisement. Both pairs then go on to enjoy their products in varied ways. When delving beyond the superficial, however, it becomes immediately clear that these two ads are not in fact portraying similar things at all, but are rather portraying very different things in regards to the appropriate work roles of people of different gender. The voiceover in the Lego advertisement describes a heavily masculine world view, where “a man’s home is his fortress,” and the father and son pair then go on to build a house together (Lego 2011). The emphasis here is on construction, and the images support this emphasis: not only is the house always growing and getting new additions, from towers and turrets to walls, windows and propellers, but the colors and patterns involved with those additions is constantly changing and rotating, indicating a flurry of activity on the part of the builders, who are constantly innovating and changing their structure. This thus not-so-subtly implies that a proper occupation for male-gendered people is to build things, to be involved with construction and with that kind of physical/mental labor, and that mans nature involves constantly tinkering and innovating to construct new things. It is thus not a stretch to argue that this advertisement perpetuates jobs that require those traits as being male roles: engineers who cannot stop tinkering, construction workers, architects and so on. This advertisement clearly sets out a number of characteristics that male-identified people should possess, and then makes those correspond with jobs and hobbies that men should thus supposedly be engaging in – things that involve using their hands and their heads. While the “Lego” advertisement is somewhat subtle in its construction of gender roles, the “Lego Friends” advertisement is anything but. The ad’s central narrative follows a series of women throughout their pursuits over the course of the day, and unsurprisingly, each of these pursuits mirrors gender stereotypes. Some of the women apparently do not work – they spend their time riding horses, drinking lemonades and so on, that is, on leisure activities (Lego Friends, 2011). As their day progresses, however, some of these women go and visit their friends who do have professions: and each of these professions is more stereotypically feminine than the last one. One woman owns a cupcake bakery, while another works at (or possibly owns) a hair solon, for instance. A slightly subtle subtext also runs through this ad when compared to the Lego one, however. In the Lego advertisement, the father-son pair is shown actually constructing things. In this ad, however, all of the buildings (which are made of at most a couple of pieces – more like a doll house than a traditional Lego product) are already constructed – the two female protagonists never actually build anything with their Legos, but engage in more passive play. This advertisement thus creates an incredibly restrictive space for women’s identities: women are to be either people of leisure, or to work at appropriately feminine professions, and no matter what should not be shown building anything, constructing anything, or engaging in creative activities of any kind. This advertisement thus hoists negative and somewhat misogynistic attitudes towards women onto a new generation of women themselves. Beyond highly stereotyping the types of play and work activities that each gender should engage in, these advertisements, through their principle protagonists, also reinforce stereotypes about the type of social relationships each gender values. In the “Lego” ad, the protagonists are a father-son pair, with one generation passing on learning and knowledge to the other, who emulates the elder he looks up to. In the “Lego Friends” advertisement, however, every woman, including the Lego figurines themselves, are portrayed as being contemporaries of each other. Men are thus portrayed as forming hierarchical, paternal relationships while women behave entirely in peer-based groups without reference to either older or younger people existing. Advertising has long played a role in shaping and creating identities, but this process is especially powerful for young people who are so impressionable to the forces of media. These two advertisements, for ostensibly similar products, demonstrate the vast gulf of stereotyping and gender-conformity that can occur in advertisements. Each ad tells children that there are certain kinds of activities that they should, and should not participate in based solely on their gender, while simultaneously reinforcing the notion that certain types of social interactions and social values are more appropriate for one gender than they are for another. Works Cited. Lego 2011. Youtube Advertisement. Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIZ2lua9aQA  Lego Friends 2011. Youtube Advertisement. Retreived from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEbJQmiZlEk  Napoli, J and Murgolo-Poore, M (2003). Female Gender Images in Adolescent Magazine Advertising. Australian Marketing Journal 11.1, pp. 60-69. Read More