Representation is incredibly important, especially in our modern media. Our society has made some big strides in recent years, with the first black Disney princess, the first LGBT wedding on television, more LGBT and POC characters on both the big and silver screens, and many more. While we have made significant strides towards representing people of all backgrounds, we still have a long way to go before we can pat ourselves on the back. While researching representation in AICE Media Studies, two ads stuck out as truly harmful to representation in our media, as well as holding true to societal norms that are harmful to many groups of people.
Tide
Tide
In this ad, we see an upper-middle-class mother and her daughter in a nicely decorated room. The mother seems to have an issue with how the daughter dresses, which is more masculine than feminine. She disapproves of the clothes, which is representative of an idea in society to stick to gender norms. Masculinity and femininity are not gender-exclusive. A man should be allowed to show his feminine side just as much as a woman should be allowed to show her masculine side. The mother wanting her daughter to conform to societal norms for girls only solidifies that idea.
In this ad, we see hundreds of women in bikinis running to a man that is spraying AXE Body Spray on himself. This ad reaffirms the societal standard of beauty for women as a slim white woman. Most of the close-ups of the women in the ad were of white women, and most of the women visible in the ad were white. This shows how our society lacks representation of women of color in our media. This also proves harmful to women who don't have a slim body type, as our society lacks representation of women who don't have that body type.
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