Champagne for my real friends
Real pain for my sham friends
Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s the billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is okay. You are okay. -- Donald Draper, Mad MenI’ve put together this collection of recent sexist advertisements from different companies. To be honest, it was difficult to pick the ones I wanted because there were so many of them. It was truly abhorrent.
Donald Draper explains to us what advertising is. Its a stroking of the ego. Sexism and patriarchy are rampant within society (advertising also touches on things like race, body size, and social class but for the purposes of this post I am focusing on those two), and thus advertising capitalizes on that, makes money on it, and perpetuates it. We’re surrounded by this kind of advertising. We can’t escape it, we’re trapped.
So when shopping or flipping through a magazine, or even driving down the high way and reading billboards, let’s all remember to put our critical thinking hats on and to identify and call out the sexism. Advertising is a significant contributor to the continued social injustices. But remember: those problems come to an end with us. If we stop responding to these advertisements the way the companies want us to, then some real reform can begin.
The model’s face in that American Apparel ad makes me really sad. Like, it looks like she’s really uncomfortable and that picture is just…beyond words.
This is great and all but I must point out that Dr. Pepper 10 ads are specifically MOCKING the whole machismo thing. So, despite the slogan if its sexist towards anyone its men. I mean, have any of you SEEN the ads? They are ridiculously “manly” on a level of the old spice ads and are kind of making fun of men being too insecure to drink diet sodas because they don’t want to come off as “girly”.
Oh yeah, but smash the patriarchy, riot riot riot.
