Yogurt
is the official food for women. Just turn on your television. Most of the time
you are going to find some women lounging around in their post workout clothes
devouring a cup of yogurt while trying to appeal to our inner women to get us
to do it too. Advertisements are a direct reflection of our gendered society.
Media is one of the most important places where gender is learned. Cultural norms
of masculinity and femininity are repeated and justified within the media,
which encourages viewers to adopt them as part of their own and further
reinforces contrasting gendered behaviors.
Since the early days of yogurt advertising companies have been targeting
women, because yogurt is seen as a diet food that helps women achieve a better
body image. Recently, yogurt companies have been strongly advertised towards
men to widen its consumer target audience. By highlighting the differences
between the feminine and masculine advertising tactics and showing how they
display their gender roles I will be providing evidence toward my overall claim.
By applying gender criticism to current yogurt commercials, you can see how
advertisers incorporate society’s contemporary gender norms through television
commercial advertisements, while trying to appeal more of a male audience,
therefore reinforcing patriarchy dominance in our society.
In
order to understand gender representations it is important to be able to distinguish
between sex and gender characteristics. In Representing
Identity, by Jason Mittell, he
mentions how sex is someone’s biological identity distinguishing having male or
females bodies. For example women can get pregnant and men cannot. Mittell also
defines how gender has feminine and masculine characteristics or traits we have
learned trough cultural practice and norms. Individuals internalize social
expectations of gender norms and behave accordingly. Take for example the
phrase, “Real men, don’t cry.” This figure of speech social constructs boys at
a young age that if you want to become a man you cannot cry. Instead of crying
they are expected to be tough and to not express their feelings, because
expression and feelings are associated as being feminine.
Next
I’m going to illustrate how food is typically gendered in our society. When thinking
about it the foods that are typically associated with being masculine are foods
like, bacon, hamburger, and steak. Men are associated with these protein-induced
types of food, because it is logical, which is another association of being
masculine. Meat is needed in order to build or maintain muscle. When a person has
dense muscles mass, than that person is considered to be strong, and being
strong is a characteristic of masculinity. Masculinity is not at all connected
to low calorie or low fat products, only meat and beer, because men do not have
the pressure to look a certain way that women have to endure.
Switching
over to feminine associated foods there is a bit more variety than just
carnivore cuisines and heavy beers. Femininity is associated with anything low
calorie like, salads or frozen Healthy Choice meals, and of course yogurt. In
contrast women are seen as being emotional and irrational eaters, which leads
us to products like ice cream, chocolate, and cheesecake. The media and society
shows women being emotional eaters, so they have to consume diet food when they
are not eating that family size tub of fudge swirl ice cream. This image is creating
a never-ending cycle, because the media is constantly showing that woman who
eats a box of chocolates when her boyfriend dumps her, but at the same time she
has to remain sexy and skinny in order to be considered acceptable in society.
So women compromise and find the solution in yogurt. Yogurt has over dozens of
different flavors that range from very vanilla to raspberry cheesecake, so they
can still indulge but only for 100 calories or less.
This
leads me to introduce the Yoplait commercial where a younger woman opens up the
refrigerator door at her workplace and instantly gazes upon a delicious looking
raspberry cheesecake. She starts a dialogue inside her head saying she can have
a slice because she has been good today and she deserves it. Then says no, but
continues to justify why she could have a slice of cheesecake by saying things
like, “How about one large slice while jogging in place, followed by eight
celery…” In mid conversation with herself a co-worker slides in right beside
her and says, “Mmmm raspberry cheesecake I’ve been thinking about this all
day.” And reaches past the high calorie cheesecake and takes out a raspberry
cheesecake flavored Yoplait Yogurt. Then the original girl says, “And you’ve
lost weight.” “Oh thank you,” the other woman says with a smile and walks off
leaving the girl there to rethink her whole situation.
The
woman who was having a dilemma whether or not she should eat the slice of
cheesecake in this commercial was illustrating how women in general are too
irrational to make the most nutritious snack choice. She is aware the
cheesecake is loaded with extra calories that does not fit her daily calorie
intake requirements, but continues to contemplate her options. She could jog in
place to burn some of the unwanted calories from the cheesecake. It is crazy
what goes through a woman’s head when she has a craving, but knows it is bad
for her diet. The media shows crazy women talking to themselves, but really it
is the media that is making women crazy. Women see the skewed body images from
advertisements and are making females feel bad for having one slice of
raspberry cheesecake.
The
feeling of guilt has often acted out in Yoplait Yogurt commercials. Women are
constantly shown advertisements of women who look a certain way, which results
in them being highly desired by men because of their long legs, slim waist, and
perfect face. Fast food commercials are notorious for sexualizing women and
using their body to sell a certain product or brand. When this happens women
are seen as the passive sexual object while men are the sexual subjects who
carry out an action. Fine examples of this are the Hardee’s commercials who
hire a hot model, singer, or actress that wear little to nothing for clothing
while seductively eating a hamburger and sauce drips onto suggestive areas.
Women
are socially constructed at a young age they are expected to look like the
women in those Hardee’s commercials which results in heavy guilt if they
fattening or sugary foods. This brings me to the Yoplait commercial entitled
“Swap-por-tu-ni-ty” where there is a group of women sitting in a living whom
seem to be in the middle of a book club discussion. Then one of the women
interrupts by asking for details about another woman’s date she had the other
night. Then it fades off focusing on one woman in the group who is looking back
and forth between a plate filled heart shaped sugar cookies and then off to a
variety of Yoplait Yogurts all while the woman is dishing details about her
previous night. The woman eventually chooses the Yoplait and the heart shaped
sugar cookies are broken and in chimes up beat music with a definition of
“Sawpportunity” which is the opportunity to switch a higher calorie snack for a
delicious 100 calorie Yoplait. Finally ends saying “One Swipe a day keeps the
calories away.”
This
commercial is showing a passive group of women display feminine qualities like sitting
around the home and gossiping, which is the complete opposite of how men are
portrayed in advertisements. Again a woman has to make a decision between
feeling guilty because she went with her emotion of wanting the sugary snack or
to compromise by getting to eat a tasty treat while sticking to her low calorie
diet. As you can see maintaining a certain body image is highly valued in the
gender role of femininity.
The majority of
yogurt commercials try to emotionally connect with those who identify
themselves as being female by illustrating feminine characteristics. By creating
this emotional draw people will tend to like the product more and more easily
recalled their product when they are in the store trying to decide on which
brand of yogurt to purchase. Women are typically the ones who go grocery shopping,
because women are shown as more domestic and the home caretaker, while the men
are shown as professionals who are the breadwinners of the household.
One good example
of this is in the Yoplait GoGurt commercial where it shows a mom in the
domestic setting of the kitchen handing off two brown paper bag school lunches
to her children. The children quickly grab there lunches and head out the door
with a weird look on each of their faces. Their reactions come from their mom’s
new smoky technique, which is slightly terrifying. Then a voice says, “You many
not be the best at new trends but you know what is best for your children.” And
then continues to talk about the nutritional value of Yoplait Yogurt. This
commercial is telling moms that they do not have to keep up with the newest
trends to be considered a good mom, but instead moms must feed their children
the right stuff and that right stuff is GoGurt. By hitting upon the parent
child relationship, and motherly responsibilities it triggers an emotional appeal
to the product.
Yogurt
commercials have been directed toward women by advertising fewer calories,
better body image, less guilt, and will be better domesticated if they choose
to put yogurt into their everyday diets. Now it is the men’s turn to be
targeted towards. Yogurt advertisers have recently noticed that men are the
most neglected consumer. The crisis is that men still want to be seen as manly
even when the product is considered to be feminine. More and more men are
concerned about their body image, because just like the women, there is a
dominate body image that is heavily displayed in the media and advertising.
Today’s
men are taking more active roles towards taking care of their body, even if it
may seem to take away some of their man points. For example it is more
acceptable for men to shave their legs and arms, get a manicure and/or
pedicure, and order a salad. Advertisers are taking notice on this recent trend
and are implementing masculine appeals to what would be considered diet food. What
came of that was the first ever yogurt that is specifically targeted toward
men. This brand took the name of POWERFUL Yogurt, which is packaged in “a man
sized package.” One of the commercials advertising the new POWERFUL Yogurt is
set in the desert where a good-looking blonde’s car has broken down. She plays
the distressed blonde who is heroically saved by this manly cowboy. He is able
to jump start her car by pinching two jumper cables to his abs. Abs that he got
by eating POWERFUL Yogurt. The commercial ends with the man and woman in the
same frame, while he eats the yogurt displaying that there are 25g of protein
in each serving. Protein is a high selling point for men because it is one of
the components to enhance muscle growth. Eating yogurt is simply logical to for
a man to eat when you list off the health benefits like, it will build muscle,
burn fat, and improve digestive health, and increase a man’s fertility; because
what is more manly than being able to get a woman pregnant?
Many
other companies are jumping onto the bandwagon of solely advertising towards
men. These companies are seeing the advantages of appealing to both feminine
and masculine gender roles. Another example if this extreme hegemonic
masculinity advertising is displayed in the new Dr. Pepper Ten commercials. For
this commercial they found a tall, muscle-bound, breaded man that effortlessly
lives off the land. He eats bark off a tree, and catches fish with his hands in
a stream right next to a grizzly bear. Then the ad ends saying Dr. Pepper ten
is only for men. This many imply that woman only drink diet beverages, and
these ten manly calories are just enough to remain dominantly masculine.
Although
women are still the target audience for most of the healthy and low calories
food advertisements, men are slowly but surely receiving more attention than in
the past years. Media advertisements have always been a good way to analyze how
the gender roles of femininity and masculinity are represented in contemporary
society. I displayed how hegemonic masculinity is presented in female directed
advertisements as well as male directed advertisements. We live in a world
where these two contrasting gender behaviors are constantly exposed and
magnified in everyday advertisement media.
Works
Cited
DossierNet.
"Powerful Yogurt - Cattle Man." YouTube. YouTube, 13 May 2013.
Web. 05 Dec. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9BwoYHwN6Q>.
Funnycoolhotvideo.
"BBQ's Best Pair - Carl's Jr. and Hardee's Commerical - Sara Underwood,
Emily Ratajkowski." YouTube. YouTube, 19 Feb. 2013. Web. 05 Dec.
2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1krJqn3smbI>.
Lois, Saleem.
"GoGurt TV Commercial, Yoghurt In A Tube - Mom's Smokey Eyes Youtube
2012." YouTube. YouTube, 22 Nov. 2013. Web. 05 Dec. 2013.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYoQOFX2LAQ>.
Mittell, Jason.
"Television Meanings." Representing Identity (n.d.): 329-51.
Print.
TVCommercialads.
"Dr Pepper TEN Mountain Man Commercial." YouTube. YouTube, 04
May 2013. Web. 05 Dec. 2013.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsp6Uli1ZLk>.
"Yoplait
Commercial Featuring Nadia Quinn - April 26, 2013." YouTube.
YouTube, 03 May 2013. Web. 05 Dec. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC0pseknG7I>.
"Yoplait
Commercial." YouTube. YouTube, 03 July 2010. Web. 05 Dec. 2013.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wzkKs0TOTs>.
REVISED ESSAY #2
Yogurt is the official food for women. Just turn on your television. Most of the time you are going to find some women lounging around in their post workout clothes devouring a cup of yogurt while trying to appeal to our inner women to get us to do it too. Advertisements are a direct reflection of our gendered society. Media is one of the most important places where gender is learned. Cultural norms of masculinity and femininity are repeated and justified within the media, which encourages viewers to adopt them as part of their own and further reinforces contrasting gendered behaviors. Since the early days of yogurt advertising companies have been targeting women, because yogurt is seen as a diet food that helps women achieve a better body image. Recently, yogurt companies have been strongly advertised towards men to widen its consumer target audience.
In my paper I will analyze yogurt
commercials to argue that food advertisements are playing on gender role
stereotypes and reinforcing patriarchy. First, I will rhetorically criticize
women targeted yogurt advertisements about how they have to maintain a perfect
body image to feel socially accepted. Then I will move to male-targeted
advertisements about how they play on men’s fears of becoming feminine and
glorify male dominance. By
highlighting the differences between the feminine and masculine advertising
tactics and showing how they display their gender roles I will be providing
evidence toward my overall claim. By applying gender criticism to current yogurt
commercials, you can see how advertisers incorporate society’s contemporary gender
norms through television commercial advertisements, while trying to appeal more
of a male audience, therefore reinforcing patriarchy dominance in our society.
In
order to understand gender representations it is important to be able to
distinguish between sex and gender characteristics. In Representing Identity, by
Jason Mittell, he mentions how sex is someone’s biological identity
distinguishing having male or females bodies. For example women can get
pregnant and men cannot. Mittell also defines how gender has feminine and
masculine characteristics or traits we have learned trough cultural practice
and norms. Individuals internalize social expectations of gender norms and
behave accordingly. Take for example the phrase, “Real men, don’t cry.” This
figure of speech social constructs boys at a young age that if you want to
become a man you cannot cry. Instead of crying they are expected to be tough
and to not express their feelings, because expression and feelings are
associated as being feminine.
Next
I’m going to illustrate how food is typically gendered in our society. When thinking
about it the foods that are typically associated with being masculine are foods
like, bacon, hamburger, and steak. Men are associated with these
protein-induced types of food, because it is logical, which is another
association of being masculine. Meat is needed in order to build or maintain
muscle. When a person has dense muscles mass, than that person is considered to
be strong, and being strong is a characteristic of masculinity. Masculinity is
not at all connected to low calorie or low fat products, only meat and beer,
because men do not have the pressure to look a certain way that women have to
endure.
Switching
over to feminine associated foods there is a bit more variety than just
carnivore cuisines and heavy beers. Femininity is associated with anything-low
calorie like, salads or frozen Healthy Choice meals, and of course yogurt. In
contrast women are seen as being emotional and irrational eaters, which leads
us to products like ice cream, chocolate, and cheesecake. The media and society
shows women being emotional eaters, so they have to consume diet food when they
are not eating that family size tub of fudge swirl ice cream. This image is creating
a never-ending cycle, because the media is constantly showing that woman who
eats a box of chocolates when her boyfriend dumps her, but at the same time she
has to remain sexy and skinny in order to be considered acceptable in society.
So women compromise and find the solution in yogurt. Yogurt has over dozens of
different flavors that range from very vanilla to raspberry cheesecake, so they
can still indulge but only for 100 calories or less.
This
leads me to introduce the Yoplait commercial where a younger woman opens up the
refrigerator door at her workplace and instantly gazes upon a delicious looking
raspberry cheesecake. She starts a dialogue inside her head saying she can have
a slice because she has been good today and she deserves it. Then says no, but
continues to justify why she could have a slice of cheesecake by saying things
like, “How about one large slice while jogging in place, followed by eight
celery…” In mid conversation with herself a co-worker slides in right beside
her and says, “Mmmm raspberry cheesecake I’ve been thinking about this all
day.” And reaches past the high calorie cheesecake and takes out a raspberry
cheesecake flavored Yoplait Yogurt. Then the original girl says, “And you’ve
lost weight.” “Oh thank you,” the other woman says with a smile and walks off
leaving the girl there to rethink her whole situation.
The
woman who was having a dilemma whether or not she should eat the slice of
cheesecake in this commercial was illustrating how women in general are too
irrational to make the most nutritious snack choice. She is aware the
cheesecake is loaded with extra calories that does not fit her daily calorie
intake requirements, but continues to contemplate her options. She could jog in
place to burn some of the unwanted calories from the cheesecake. It is crazy
what goes through a woman’s head when she has a craving, but knows it is bad
for her diet. The media shows crazy women talking to themselves, but really it
is the media that is making women crazy. Women see the skewed body images from
advertisements and are making females feel bad for having one slice of
raspberry cheesecake.
The
feeling of guilt has often acted out in Yoplait Yogurt commercials. Women are
constantly shown advertisements of women who look a certain way, which results
in them being highly desired by men because of their long legs, slim waist, and
perfect face. Fast food commercials are notorious for sexualizing women and
using their body to sell a certain product or brand. When this happens women
are seen as the passive sexual object while men are the sexual subjects who
carry out an action. Fine examples of this are the Hardee’s commercials who
hire a hot model, singer, or actress that wear little to nothing for clothing
while seductively eating a hamburger and sauce drips onto suggestive areas.
Women
are socially constructed at a young age they are expected to look like the
women in those Hardee’s commercials which results in heavy guilt if they
fattening or sugary foods. This brings me to the Yoplait commercial entitled
“Swap-por-tu-ni-ty” where there is a group of women sitting in a living whom
seem to be in the middle of a book club discussion. Then one of the women
interrupts by asking for details about another woman’s date she had the other
night. Then it fades off focusing on one woman in the group who is looking back
and forth between a plate filled heart shaped sugar cookies and then off to a
variety of Yoplait Yogurts all while the woman is dishing details about her
previous night. The woman eventually chooses the Yoplait and the heart shaped
sugar cookies are broken and in chimes up beat music with a definition of
“Sawpportunity” which is the opportunity to switch a higher calorie snack for a
delicious 100 calorie Yoplait. Finally ends saying “One Swipe a day keeps the
calories away.”
This
commercial is showing a passive group of women display feminine qualities like sitting
around the home and gossiping, which is the complete opposite of how men are
portrayed in advertisements. Again a woman has to make a decision between
feeling guilty because she went with her emotion of wanting the sugary snack or
to compromise by getting to eat a tasty treat while sticking to her low calorie
diet. As you can see maintaining a certain body image is highly valued in the
gender role of femininity.
The majority of
yogurt commercials try to emotionally connect with those who identify
themselves as being female by illustrating feminine characteristics. By creating
this emotional draw people will tend to like the product more and more easily
recalled their product when they are in the store trying to decide on which
brand of yogurt to purchase. Women are typically the ones who go grocery shopping,
because women are shown as more domestic and the home caretaker, while the men
are shown as professionals who are the breadwinners of the household.
One good example
of this is in the Yoplait GoGurt commercial where it shows a mom in the
domestic setting of the kitchen handing off two brown paper bag school lunches
to her children. The children quickly grab there lunches and head out the door
with a weird look on each of their faces. Their reactions come from their mom’s
new smoky technique, which is slightly terrifying. Then a voice says, “You many
not be the best at new trends but you know what is best for your children.” And
then continues to talk about the nutritional value of Yoplait Yogurt. This
commercial is telling moms that they do not have to keep up with the newest
trends to be considered a good mom, but instead moms must feed their children
the right stuff and that right stuff is GoGurt. By hitting upon the parent
child relationship, and motherly responsibilities it triggers an emotional appeal
to the product.
Yogurt
commercials have been directed toward women by advertising fewer calories,
better body image, less guilt, and will be better domesticated if they choose
to put yogurt into their everyday diets. Now it is the men’s turn to be
targeted towards. Yogurt advertisers have recently noticed that men are the
most neglected consumer. The crisis is that men still want to be seen as manly
even when the product is considered to be feminine. More and more men are
concerned about their body image, because just like the women, there is a
dominate body image that is heavily displayed in the media and advertising.
Today’s
men are taking more active roles towards taking care of their body, even if it
may seem to take away some of their man points. In The Stuff Men Are Made Of, by Grantland Rice argues that society has
become so civilized that men are being stripped of their outlets to be
masculine and are becoming soft. For example laws keep men from showing their
dominance through physical force. It is harder for men to show exhibit their
masculinity as often than in the past. Now it is more acceptable for men to shave their legs and arms, get a
manicure and/or pedicure, and order a salad. Advertisers are taking notice on
this recent trend and are implementing masculine appeals to what would be
considered diet food. What came of that was the first ever yogurt that is
specifically targeted toward men. This brand took the name of POWERFUL Yogurt,
which is packaged in “a man sized package.” One of the commercials advertising
the new POWERFUL Yogurt is set in the desert where a good-looking blonde’s car
has broken down. She plays the distressed blonde who is heroically saved by
this manly cowboy. He is able to jump start her car by pinching two jumper
cables to his abs. Abs that he got by eating POWERFUL Yogurt. The commercial
ends with the man and woman in the same frame, while he eats the yogurt
displaying that there are 25g of protein in each serving. Protein is a high
selling point for men because it is one of the components to enhance muscle
growth. Eating yogurt is simply logical to for a man to eat when you list off
the health benefits like, it will build muscle, burn fat, and improve digestive
health, and increase a man’s fertility; because what is more manly than being
able to get a woman pregnant?
Many
other companies are jumping onto the bandwagon of solely advertising towards
men. These companies are seeing the advantages of appealing to both feminine
and masculine gender roles. Another example if this extreme hegemonic
masculinity advertising is displayed in the new Dr. Pepper Ten commercials. For
this commercial they found a tall, muscle-bound, breaded man that effortlessly
lives off the land. He eats bark off a tree, and catches fish with his hands in
a stream right next to a grizzly bear. Then the ad ends saying Dr. Pepper ten
is only for men. This many imply that woman only drink diet beverages, and
these ten manly calories are just enough to remain dominantly masculine.
Although
women are still the target audience for most of the healthy and low calories
food advertisements, men are slowly but surely receiving more attention than in
the past years. Media advertisements have always been a good way to analyze how
the gender roles of femininity and masculinity are represented in contemporary
society. I displayed how hegemonic masculinity is presented in female directed
advertisements as well as male directed advertisements.
We live in a world where these two contrasting gender behaviors are constantly
exposed and magnified in everyday advertisement media.
Works
Cited
DossierNet.
"Powerful Yogurt - Cattle Man." YouTube. YouTube, 13 May 2013.
Web. 05 Dec. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9BwoYHwN6Q>.
Funnycoolhotvideo.
"BBQ's Best Pair - Carl's Jr. and Hardee's Commerical - Sara Underwood,
Emily Ratajkowski." YouTube. YouTube, 19 Feb. 2013. Web. 05 Dec.
2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1krJqn3smbI>.
Lois, Saleem.
"GoGurt TV Commercial, Yoghurt In A Tube - Mom's Smokey Eyes Youtube
2012." YouTube. YouTube, 22 Nov. 2013. Web. 05 Dec. 2013.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYoQOFX2LAQ>.
Mittell, Jason.
"Television Meanings." Representing Identity (n.d.): 329-51.
Print.
TVCommercialads.
"Dr Pepper TEN Mountain Man Commercial." YouTube. YouTube, 04
May 2013. Web. 05 Dec. 2013.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zsp6Uli1ZLk>.
"Yoplait Commercial
Featuring Nadia Quinn - April 26, 2013." YouTube. YouTube, 03 May
2013. Web. 05 Dec. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC0pseknG7I>.
"Yoplait
Commercial." YouTube. YouTube, 03 July 2010. Web. 05 Dec. 2013.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wzkKs0TOTs>.
REFLECTION- I thought it would be beneficial to add more detail into the beginning of my essay. I laid out what I was going to talk about within my paper more clearly so the reader could know what to expect and be able to grasp my argument more clearly. I know that you advised me to take out the Dr. Pepper Ten commercials but I thought that was an excellent example to support my argument of extreme patriarchy to reinforce their masculinity and not worry about being considered feminine for drinking a low calorie drink. I add in an academic article to support my claim of men today being worried about seeming feminine.
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