Post 7: Gender Stereotypes in our 2/25 workshop commercials

In this workshop, we discussed the gender stereotypes in advertisements. One particular ad that caught my interest was the Diet Coke commercial where man become the sexual object in the ad while the women in the ad were the initializers of the event. First we seen a bunch of women in picnic, they were drinking the diet cokes, and one of them spotted a young, built gardner. One of the ladies rolled a diet coke can to the gardner and tell him to open the coke that has been shaken while on its way to him. As a result, the gardner was soaked with coke, and here is where he took of his t-shirt and shows off his well-build torso to impress the picnic ladies. To make this ad more intimate, we have a background song that is about a woman who is desperately in love with a man and do anything with the man. Me and my group figured out it is another sexism ad, it jut this time man is the sexual object. In other words, role reversal on the traditional gender stereotypes. Next, we were asked that what if the gender between the character swapped, and what would be wrong with it. If the gender were swapped, I personally would feel like it is a bunch of picnic guys bulling a hard working girl with soda tricks, and the girl would go on and show the guys her body after being soaked by soda. In short, it would be very inappropriate than it originally was. However, the original ad was already wrong enough since I think using anyone as sexual object is silly and demeaning.