Advertisements reflect and perpetuate our needs and wants as well as the things we “do.” If people want shiny new Lexus SUVs or Folgers coffee, advertisements proliferate to reflect the things we demand and to encourage us to buy more. Advertisements are also reflections of the things we “do,” such as gender. “Doing gender” is defined as the process of performing and fulfilling a gender role as constituted by “socially constructed and maintained” expectations and guidelines (Lorber 12). In the case of advertisements, especially those promoting food items, women are often times portrayed in particular roles—usually as a mother or wife who chooses and serves particular foods to her family, or as a woman who chooses certain brands of foods in order to stay slim and attractive. Thus advertisements target certain audiences to encourage sales and consumption by using perspectives that appeal to that particular audience, while also perpetuating the association between the product and its targeted buyers.
Take, for instance, Dove chocolate. This product is targeted exclusively to women. Commercial advertisements for this product typically involve a woman who is consumed in the indulgence of Dove chocolate after one bite—and the commercials always end with “My moment. My Dove.” And indulgence is the point exactly; we’re supposed to indulge in the guilt-ridden chocolate after a long hard day of being a woman. In a recent commercial, the narrator says, “We’re only human, but we try to be perfect. We pretend that high heels are comfortable, and that waxing just takes getting used to.”
So, since it sucks to wear high heels and wax our legs, we women should eat chocolate. Because we’re “only human.” But humans include men, and I do not see any men in these commercials. Surely there are men out there that like chocolate. But in society, chocolate is a woman’s thing. Another product targeted almost exclusively to women is Yoplait yogurt. The particular commercial I’m including here illustrates the point that women should be weight-obsessed and conscious of the foods we eat because we might get fat. And that’s just terrible. The woman chews her lip while contemplating the punishment for her indulgence—she could “jog in place as [she] eats it,” or she can follow the slice of cheesecake with “celery sticks, [because] they would cancel each other out.”
In fact, this commercial has recently been pulled off the air by Yoplait because of claims that it promotes eating disorders. But print advertisements by Yoplait encourage a similar “indulgence.”
Here, women-who-crave-midnight-snacks, indulge in Yoplait yogurt because it’s only 100 calories, and therefore guilt-free. Enjoy.
However, targeting women’s weight obsession with guilt-free products is not only a modern occurrence. Although the following advertisement operates under different gender expectations from the mid-20th century, it is not difficult to make the connection between society’s expectations for a woman’s body with products that allow for a little indulgence while still keeping a woman slim and attractive. Perhaps there were more overt expectations for women to catch and keep a man partly with her attractive figure during this time period, but I do not think it is far-fetched to come to a similar conclusion with the above-mentioned advertisements. After all, someone is looking at the body that is kept thin by Yoplait yogurt.
Another aspect of advertising that promotes and perpetuates “doing gender” is the role of being a mother, a mother that provides food for her family. Marjorie DeVault points out that “feeding work has become one of the primary ways that women ‘do’ gender,” by pleasing her children and her husband with choosing and preparing foods that show how much she cares (118). An advertisement I am sure many of us are familiar with is JIF peanut butter. “Choosy moms choose JIF,” right? Granted, not every JIF commercial shows women serving JIF peanut butter sandwiches to her husband and kids, but every commercial has the tagline, “choosing JIF is a simple way to show someone how much you care. Choosy moms choose JIF.” Even if you watch the commercial with the little girl and her dad building a tree house together, you get the same tagline—mom does the grocery shopping, and she chooses JIF, so she cares about us.
And this print advertisement for JIF peanut butter insinuates that although “being a mom doesn’t come with instructions,” choosing JIF means a mom who gives her family this peanut butter is a choosy mom, and a caring mom.
Other advertisements that exemplify this notion occur in mid-20th century print advertisements from LIFE magazine. As grocery-shopper and provider of meals, advertisements, such as this one for Libby’s pumpkin pie filling, target women and claim to ensure her man’s satisfaction with her pie-making if she uses this product. It is understandable how appealing many advertisements like this were with taglines such as, “it’s so easy now to thrill your pie-guy with a flaky-crusted, melt-in-the-mouth ‘punkin’!” when baking pies and cakes was “universally recognized as a triumph of love as much as a skill” (Shapiro 31).
Although modern-day food advertisements are not necessarily as blatant with depictions of gender roles as advertisements from the mid-20th century, it is still a valid argument to view “feeding as a ‘gendered activity,’” particularly a womanly one (DeVault 117). Advertisements become effective “resources for the production [and reproduction] of gender” in regards to food selection and production when they aim for specific audiences as Dove chocolate and Yoplait yogurt do (118). Even though I specifically focused on women in this post, it is important to recognize that food-related advertisements do not only target women; there are many male-oriented food advertisements, such as Hillshire Farm meats (Go meat!).
Although modern-day food advertisements are not necessarily as blatant with depictions of gender roles as advertisements from the mid-20th century, it is still a valid argument to view “feeding as a ‘gendered activity,’” particularly a womanly one (DeVault 117). Advertisements become effective “resources for the production [and reproduction] of gender” in regards to food selection and production when they aim for specific audiences as Dove chocolate and Yoplait yogurt do (118). Even though I specifically focused on women in this post, it is important to recognize that food-related advertisements do not only target women; there are many male-oriented food advertisements, such as Hillshire Farm meats (Go meat!).
Thus advertisements provide us with resources to understand how people “do gender” with societal roles and expectations that are embedded in the very pictures and commercials that reflect our wants and needs.
Works Cited
DeVault, Marjorie L. Feeding the Family: The Social Organization of Caring as Gendered Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. 95-119.
Lorber, Judith. Gender Inequality: Feminist Theories and Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Shapiro, Laura. “‘I Guarantee’: Betty Crocker and the Woman in the Kitchen.” Avakian, Arlene Voski and Barbara Haber, eds. From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. 29-40.
Wow -- that Pepsi ad is something else. We'll see if we might be able to talk about that one in class. Watching the ways that narratives of motherhood are constructed are particularly intriguing in your post. I'm curious to think about the ways that the ads show how motherhood as a practice has both shifted and remained the same. It seems that the ads are a great way of cultivating nostalgia for the mother that once was.
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