Article Choice: advertisements

Article Choice: advertisements

Article Choice: advertisements

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I chose the advertisements that I did because I was interested in how they related gender to

food. Each advertisement is marketing a certain food: gelato, candy bars, or ice cream. Each

advertisement depicts either females alone or females in specific gender roles. I was also

intrigued by the advertisements because I am female and I enjoy eating chocolate. When I have

had a hard day I enjoy coming home and indulging in dessert to comfort myself. Some of the

advertisements portray women as having a desire for sweets, which made me question my own

tendency to desire sweet foods after a hard day at work.

Assumptions and Observations

Audience. Each advertisement has a specific audience to which it appeals. Each

advertisement depicts mostly white actors and actresses. The intended audience of these

advertisements are people who use food as reward. The audience for these advertisements

would most likely be people from a westernized civilization who have excess food to use for

pleasure or reward. For example, people who live in countries where there is not easy access to

plentiful amounts of food would not have the same relationship to food as the people depicted in

these advertisements. There are other aspects of the advertisements that make me think the

intended audience is white and westernized. For example, the marriage in the Milky Way

advertisement appears to be a traditional Christian wedding, based on the presence of a priest

and the decoration of the church. The Freddo Ice Cream advertisement depicts children, all of

them white, and represents a democracy in which people are elected to government positions.

The Celebration advertisement is also showing individuals—all of whom are also white—who

again are using food as a way of celebrating. Finally, the Antonio Federici advertisement is

depicting a white nun being sinful by eating chocolate, which again seems to be portraying a

relationship between indulgence and food. I believe the relationship of food as indulgence is a

more westernized and privileged notion. Based on my observations, I believe the intended

audience for most of these advertisements are middle-class, white women.

Message. The message the advertisements are sending all seem to be about the

relationship between people and food. For the Federici advertisement, the message is that

women use rich, sweet food for indulgence and as a “guilty pleasure.” The advertisement even

seems to relate the indulgence of this sweet food with sin by showing a nun who is pregnant.

The Freddo Ice Cream advertisement is also showing a relationship between food and people.

In this advertisement, I observed that the girls are the ones serving food, while the boy is the

one running for office. This advertisement seems to portray a stereotype of women serving

men. It also is showing a relationship between women being the ones to handle the serving and

maybe even the preparation of food. The Celebration advertisement’s message again appears to

show a relationship between women celebrating with food. The ad even shows the girls

celebrating other’s misfortune, thereby seeming to portray females as selfish. The Milky Way

advertisement also depicts a woman as being selfish by indulging in chocolate, which makes

her late for her own wedding. A common message is showing gender stereotypes as they relate

to women and food.