Gender Stereotypes - Fashion

Despite the great similarities in function and use of Men and Women's clothing, advertisers seem to continuously make the decision to advertise the character of the clothing being sold in incredibly different ways. Looking at these ads, it is easy to observe that Men are advertised to as the more active, smarter and productive sex while Women are advertised to as the ditsy, stereotypical bimbo. In these three ads, men take the roles of scholars, breadwinners and athletes, while women take the role of stereotypical bimbo. There is no background or depth to their character, they really are just the ditsy, socialite. 

These ads are a terrible reflection of the roles created for women in our society. As per the usual, the men are seen as the more valuable, more important sex over women who are instead seen as ditsy, girly and delicate. These ads create the feeling that women are lesser than men. These ads seem like the modern version of their much more blatant predecessors. Take for example, this ad for trousers. It has the same basic impact but in a much more direct manner.

It's a terrible reflection of the inequality generated between the two sexes generated by the fashion industry and is a controversy they really should learn to avoid, especially when you factor in the self-esteem problems that they create with their incredibly problematic ads.

It's truly disgusting how early this classifying begins. If you look at the 3rd ad, you'll see that even with toddlers they are being pushed to fill certain roles. With this amount of influence, it's easy to see how ingrained and deeply set this mentality can become. These standards for women have been around for such a long time, it's incredible to see exactly how normalized they have become. Looking at the 3rd eye, I can tell you that there were plenty of executives that signed off on that campaign without thinking that it would have such a terrible impact. It's so normalized that it is close to becoming accepted.