CMNS 223W Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Metrosexual, Marlboro Man, Media Culture

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Communication
• Course: CMNS 223W
• Professor: Jody Baker

Document Summary

First, let us establish that the term and concept of stereotype is too simplistic and static to help us understand how gender functions in advertising. As we will see in a few weeks, even in the 1920s the representation of women was complex, contradictory and diverse. Yes, it is easy to identify cultural stereotypes but the ideological foundations of consumer culture are built on the ideas of freedom, individuality and the ability to remake oneself. Static stereotypes that reproduce oppressive, static selves have no place in advertising beyond a few extreme and absurd examples. Advertising to women tends to ofer liberation and freedom, not gender slavery and domestic drudgery. Consumer culture is build upon the idea of choice; stereotypes ofer no choices. At the same time, it is hard not to notice how women are deined through their bodies, sexualized and placed within limited social roles of goddess, housewife, mother, etc.