How Advertising Contributes To The Formation Of Stereotypes

Beyond the readings, what would you add to this discussion? Be clear in your argument and substantiate your rationale.
The author of the reading suggests that advertisers often include a range of stereotypes in their adverts in an attempt to target or appeal to a specific niche or demographic. Due to the limited airing period and print space that advertising agencies have to compress their adverts to, and the vast scopes that their messages have to cover, they are forced to use stereotypes to relate to as many people as possible from their customer target group. Advertisers use stereotypes to set the stage and define important characters in their messages as quickly as possible.
I believe there are several ways through which advertising contributes to stereotypes. One of these ways is in the biased casting of the models in the commercials. When different commercials routinely cast people with similar body types, personalities, or ethnicities for particular tasks, they are promoting the stereotype that those particular tasks are reserved for those types of people.

Another way that advertising contributes to stereotyping is through their messages. Advertising messages may carry different stereotypes, some on purpose and some accidentally. Scheduling is another way that advertising contributes to stereotypes. For instance, scheduling beer commercial during sporting events is based on the assumption that beer lovers also love sports. According to the readings, how does advertising influence gender perceptions? Beyond the readings, what would you add to this discussion? Be clear in your argument and substantiate your rationale.
According to the reading, advertising influences gender perception by advancing gender stereotyping in commercials. The author argues that intrinsically, men and women are inarguably different, and advertisers’ efforts to highlight these differences in their commercials have contributed immensely to how societies perceive different genders.

This influence can be seen in role portrayals, where men and women are cast for stereotypical societal roles, like portraying women as homemakers, and men as breadwinners. Other elements of advertising that influence gender perception is through beauty stereotyping, where adverts try to set beauty standards for different genders, and sexual stereotyping, where messages in commercials try to define different roles of men and women in sexual relationships. Sexual stereotypes also involve giving more sexually explicit roles to women, which paints them negatively as sex objects. Advertisers have great influence on gender perceptions even from a very young age. This can be seen in the plethora of commercials targeted at young children, which gives young girls passive roles, and boys are given active roles. Most toy commercials often incorporate messages that show boys playing with specific types of toys like cars and trucks, which can be played with outdoors, and girls playing with different types of toys like dolls, which are often played indoors.

Such types of stereotypes may seem innocent, but considering that children might be highly suggestible, they may influence these children perceptions of gender roles, in their young ages, and as adults. According to the readings, how does advertising influence perceptions regarding race? Beyond the readings, what would you add to this discussion? Be clear in your argument and substantiate your rationale. The author of the reading suggests that there are several ways through which advertising influences perceptions regarding race, which include positive and negative stereotypes in the portrayal of different ethnic groups, the frequency of representation for members of specific ethnic groups, and the types of products that are advertised by members of a certain ethnic group. Examples of these stereotypes include using messages that insinuate African Americans love chicken nuggets, white people love monster trucks, Latin Americans do irregular jobs, and Asians aren’t the best of drivers.

The examples mentioned above are all negative, but several commercials also include positive racial stereotypes, especially now when racial sensitivity is a key issue. Some of these stereotypes aren’t very obvious in commercials, while others are not very subtle. I believe one of the most blatant ways that advertising influences perception regarding race is through beauty whitewash. This is where advertisers advance an ideal of beauty that is based on a specific skin and hair color. This results in advertisers artificially lightening the skin color of some models in magazines and television commercials ‘to make them beautiful.’ Also, in the casting of the commercials, some advertisers will only cast colored women whose psychical features conform to the ideal of ‘white beauty’, which includes straight hair and light skin.

According to the readings, how does advertising influence perceptions regarding sexual orientation? Beyond the readings, what would you add to this discussion? Be clear in your argument and substantiate your rationale.  The book suggests that advertisers influence perceptions regarding sexual orientation in different ways that include non-proportionate representation of the LGBT community in commercials, refusing to include gay people in commercials to avoid backlash from the non-LGBT audience, portraying different sexual orientations under a stereotypical light, like including messages that show gay men are flamboyant and high maintenance.

Also, to minimize outrage from non-LGBT customers, companies that still want to advertise to diverse sexual orientation groups try to reach the LGBT community through windows like the gay pride parade, or by including subtle stereotypical signs in the commercials that gay people can easily recognize, and heterosexual people can’t, such as rainbows. I believe advertising influences perception regarding sexual orientation by conforming to societal bias towards minority sexual orientations. Due to the negative attitudes often associated with portrayals of gay men in commercials, they cast less and less of them, and rarely include messages that cater directly to them. When they include sexual minorities in commercials, many advertisers often portray them in a similar light as major societal stereotypes surrounding them, like dressing lesbians in ‘less feminine clothes,’ or gay men in shiny stylish attires.