The Gender Codes

This time it's all about how advertising and their imagery has affecting society with their use of the gender codes. This past week in my Advertising and Imagery class I watched the films; Killing Us Softly, Ted Talk with Johanna Blakley and Codes of Gender. All of these movies examined how men and women are used in the advertising industry and the result of doing so in our society. Women are especially paid attention to due to the problems that have been created with eating disorders and the blending of women and girls in childhood. Ill save you from mundane summaries of each three and instead the links above will bring you to a summation of each film.

These three film bring up many ideas and provide proof but some of these I feel need special attention. These would be the blending of women and girls in society, sizes of the models and the idea that social media will help erase these gender lines.

In today's world there is not such thing as women and girls anymore due to both becoming the same. Women are pushed to be girls and as such are portrayed as them. While girls are portrayed as women which has in-turn put more and more pressure on the younger generation to portray themselves as women. Unfortunately in today's world sex sells right? So this means that when these girls are portrayed they are becoming the sexualized women of these ads which can be somewhat disturbing. The girls shown in the picture have short skirts and purses. As a culture we expect our children to play outside and not have to worry about their appearance to the rest of society. While there seems to be no harm, when it starts at such a young age it will only become worse in the teenage years where we see a large about a problems arise.

Another problem with our gender codes is the idea that women are suppose to be a certain size and look a certain way. Unfortunately only 5% of the women population are genetically able to reach a size double zero. Worse is that women still try to reach these sizes and do so in very unhealthy ways. Anorexia and Bulimia are examples of eating disorders that women and girls suffer from in their drive to reach this size. To show the difference in models from 50 years ago to today can help show how bad the problem has gotten with the gender code.

 

Not all hope is lost though, some organizations like Dove have make it a point to fight these gender codes by showing women who are comfortable with not being the size 00. But who knows if it will be enough to create a change but one can only hope.

Lastly during the film Ted Talk with Johanna Blakley, Blakley makes the case that social media can help erase these gender lines. Unfortunately I don't agree that this is possible. I think that social media has helped change the way ads are shown but the networks themselves are becoming a problem leading to various eating disorders.

Gender Codes become a touchy subject with a lot of views and many sides to the issues. No matter what the outcome is I can only hope that the end product will be a gender code where health is valued over looks.