A Stereotypical Media

By: Clint Phillips E-mail: a65phalcon@hotmail.com A Stereotypical Media The media of today's society plays the peddler to the stereotypes that plague our country. However, the media is not solely to blame. Susan Sontag states in her essay "The Image World": "Through being photographed, something becomes part of a system of information, fitted into schemes of classification and storage"(Sontag 196). Through our own demand as consumers, the use of advertising in television, newspapers, and especially magazines relays to the public an erratic system of stereotypical information. The system of information relayed through photographic imagery in advertising directly affects the thoughts of society, on how a woman should look and feel. Thus, mixing the stereotypical woman of delicacy, and grandeur with sex and sexuality. The vast amount of stereotypical advertising today is directed at the middle-class, American worker. This specification in advertising is due to the fact that the middle class workers are the main consumers.

Grave of Susan Sontag

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This idea is represented in the magazine, Newsweek. Printed on April 3, 2000, Newsweek prints numerous articles of news that are not so focused and in-depth, but still contains valid consistency. The magazine is M/C Phillips, Page 2 truly tailored to the middle class and so is its advertising. In the midst of clutter, from articles of political power, to the rise of the doughnut culture, sits an ad of poise and content. Posted by the Target Corporation, a store tailored to the middle class, the ad displays, a very young, beautiful woman covered shoulders to toe in ivy, holding a rayon handbag. She is poised, illustrious and elegant, a mirror image of a statue. The backdrop of the image is calm, organized and serene. The ad reads "ivy plant $6.99, rayon crochet bag $14.99"(Newsweek 7). However, the ad's imagery at first glance does not fully...