Frustrating Gender Stereotyping Is Everywhere We Look

shutterstock_154074197__1380462361_142.196.156.251We often write on this site about the gender stereotyping that companies marketing to children often fall prey to; the princess roles, the pink everything, the superheroes for boys – it’s something that is becoming more and more obvious and tedious. Some parents don’t care, but a lot of us are thinking, Hey. Knock it off. My daughter doesn’t have to be a princess. My son doesn’t have to enjoy crashing things into each other. Just stop.

The thing that I find disturbing about this kind of marketing is how subliminal it is. Girls will  giggle and prance around in most commercials. Boys will jump and at some point probably scream Yeah! And it doesn’t stop with children. Cleaning products are still predominantly marketed to women. Even things like diapers and food seem to have women as their target audience. It’s as if the advertising world still thinks we live in the 1950’s. Why are so many companies still doing this?

Brinks Home Security is the newest company to put out some Really guys? ad. In a graphic they made to illustrate how dangerous/hard it may be to get into your home with your hands full, they came up with this:

(photo: thesocietypages.org)
(photo: thesocietypages.org)

Of course women would be on the phone, hands full of groceries or laundry. Men are returning home from a business trip of some sort, luggage and briefcase in hand. I know some think that stuff like this is no big deal. But why? Why does it have to be like this? Why can’t one creative in one of these meetings say, Hey. How about we make a graphic of a man holding a laundry basket, since they do laundry, too? How about an image of a woman returning from a business trip? It’s important to point these things out and make a “big deal” out of them because this kind of innate sexist bullshit is not good for the collective psyches of men or women.

(photo: marekulias/ Shutterstock)

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