Gender Roles and Advertising: The Gender Advertising Remixer

The Gender Advertising Remixer made me realize how staunchly different ads directed to boys and girls are. They are both at completely opposite ends of the gender stereotype spectrum. Either the advertisers went all in making the toys directed at boys feel more violent and action oriented, or they made the toys directed at girls feel hyper-cheerful and fun. The ads targeting boys used more dark colors and intense music. The ads targeting girls featured more bright pinks and happy music and singing. Merging two of these ads together made for a pretty weird advertisement that just felt wrong. This is probably a lingering effect of the gender roles ingrained in me from such a young age where boys were supposed to play with “action figures” and girls were supposed to play with “dolls”.  Looking at these ads now it’s easy to see how gender is so easily seen in black and white. From youth, we are bombarded with media and advertisements basically telling us that we have to be one or the other. And as we talked about in Dr. Fernandez’s class today, that simply isn’t the case.