Silencing Gender
5-Hour Energy Ad: "Last 5 Hours"
Silencing Gender Paper
September 22, 2014
Advertisements in the media are designed to grab the viewer's attention at all costs, even if the price is the objectification and degradation of women and men. For this paper, I will be focusing on how women are negatively portrayed in a particular 5-Hour Energy advertisement and how this type of communication affects society's views of gender. I will start by introducing three concepts from my textbook that I used to evaluate and analyze my artifact. I will then explain the advertisement in question and give a detailed analysis, incorporating and applying the concepts I chose to use. Lastly, I will recommend actions that could be taken to combat the stereotypes presented in the advertisement.
Concepts
The theories I will be using to evaluate my artifact include the following: Standpoint Theory, Social Learning Theory, Cognitive Development Theory. After finding my artifact, I decided to use the selected theories because I feel like they help explain the stereotypes presented in the advertisement.
Standpoint theory claims that marginalized groups can generate unique insight into how a society works (Wood, 2011). The theory helps us understand gender by explaining how membership in particular groups "shape individuals' experiences, perspectives, identities, and abilities" (Wood, 2011). Standpoint theory will help me in my analysis by giving me an understanding how females are portrayed in my artifact and how this portrayal shapes viewers perception of women in today's world.
Social learning theory claims that individuals learn to be masculine and feminine by interacting with others and getting responses from others about their behaviors. This theory states that children tend to mimic what they see on television and other media outlets, which, in turn, can reinforce traditional sex roles (Wood, 2011). When children...