Week 2 Response

Gender policing is a practice that takes place in advertising with or without the target of the advertisement even realizing that it is happening. Gender policing perpetuates stereotypes quite simply by reinforcing ideas of what it means to be a man, women, but may even expand into other types of policing such as what it means to be African American, environmentalist, etc.. These stereotypes are reinforced in almost all aspects of advertising including television commercials, print, internet ads, and more. By repetitive bombardment of stereotypes, it is easy for one to get caught up in the ideas put forth by advertisements and shape their individual role, consciously or sub-consciously, based around the ideas of what those roles are, which is decided not by society, but by advertising agencies. Whether or not one should live up to these roles is ultimately up to the individual, but because of the increasing amount of advertising viewed by people every day, it is easy for one to feel that they must act out these stereotypes to become a true man, woman, etc.. Other examples of this type of this type of advertising is easily seen in cigarette ads. Rugged men should smoke Marlboro cigarettes. Women should smoke Virginia Slims. African Americans should smoke Kool brand cigarettes. Rich people smoke only Nat Sherman brand cigarettes. These are all examples of gender policing, race policing, and even status in society policing. Companies use this form of advertising in a very clever fashion to sell their product. The policing type of ads make people feel that they need to use a certain product to reinforce who they think they are or even to portray an image of who they want to be seen as. Most people will feel the need to buy a product that best fits the self-image they would like to portray. That is how these ads succeed. The disadvantages of this type of advertising is the alienation factor. The policing ads alienate many who feel that they don't fit into the target demographic for the product. Men generally won't buy products that are targeted to females and vice versa. What the companies don't realize is they would probably sell more of the product if the ads were geared towards the general population and not simply specific groups.