Saturday, January 22, 2011

Post 9, Question I: Tough Guise are Killing us Softly

The two videos Kilbourne "Killing Us Softly 3" and Katz's "Tough Guise" each deal with how the media portays each sex, and the damage it does to both.

In "Killing Us Softly", Kilbourne talks about the contining degradation in women in media, especially in advertisement. While we see that advitisors are as overt with assigning gender roles as they once were, there is still an issue with how women are portrayed in the media. One of the primary oppressors is the cosmetic and plastic surgery industry, as well as the various magazines that cater to women. These ads portray supposed "perfect" images of women, which many women strive to achieve. Unfortunately, as she points out, this look only belongs to a small minority of women.

In "Tough Guise" Katz discusses how society portrayl as the "strong, silent type" as he calls the "Tough Guise". He argues the contiuall presure for boys and young men to be strong, physical, and tough may be the cause of a majority of the cases of violence against women, and a number of the school shooting that happened in the late 90's.

Katz says that the images of boys are present across all socio-economic backgrounds and transcend race. In fact, he points out they are even more of a problem for people of color as there are less portrayals of them in general.

I myself often wonder why advertisers use these portrayals that are based on generalization. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that there are only a limited amount of channels in traditional media to sell products and advertisers instead of advertisers catering to a large diverse audience, they make their job easier by generalizing and catering to everyone.

I see web advertising as being a promising platform for advertiser to be able to cater their messages to more diverse groups, and allow them to stop generalizing. Since web ads (and the product they sell) can now be easily tweaked and distributed to a more diverse audience, advertiser have the opportunity to better sell their products and identify with their audiences. This should also allow them to avoid using generalizations to get their point across, which is a win for both sides.

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