Representation Analysis

Tide Ad

In the very beginning of the ad, the mom makes it abundantly clear that she has tried to change her daughter’s style when she said: “We’ve tried the whole pink thing.” That comment insinuates that girls are supposed to gravitate more towards pink because it is a feminine color. This mother is reinforcing the gender labels that society has distributed through color to her young daughter and she’s even wearing a pink cardigan while doing it. They looked to be a middle to higher class family which someone watching this ad can interpret it as people of a higher class looking down on those who dress differently. Her mom was obviously not comfortable with her daughter dressing more like a tomboy than a girly girl and the message this video is giving can be offensive to women who choose to dress more masculine than feminine. People choose to dress the way they do because they like it and feel confident with their style and sometimes individuals want to wear something that was designed with the opposite gender in mind. No one should feel pigeonholed or trapped in fashion because fashion is supposed to be personal and customized to all individuals. There are a lot of people in the LGBTQ+ community that crossdress and this is showing them that in order to make others feel more comfortable they need to change their outer appearance to look more like society's idea of normal. They are subliminally being told that they are outcasts and are not accepted because of their styling choices. The little girl is playing with wooden building blocks while the mom is talking to the viewer and at the end she asks her daughter if she’s building another car garage. The question alone makes it known that her daughter has been building these for a while. Having the mom question her daughters choice to build blocks instead of playing with dolls for example is another way she is trying to make her daughter conform to society’s gender standards. The mother in the ad is basically saying that her daughter shouldn’t be an architect or an engineer because she doesn’t have the qualifications due to her gender. Little girls watching this who dream of having careers in male dominated industries may feel like they shouldn’t go after that profession because it’s not common for women to have jobs in those fields. Women have historically been suppressed and bullied into not acquiring main industry careers, high paying positions, or jobs that require any major political, intellectual, or physical challenges. There was a time where being anything but a stay at home mom and taking care of your family was taboo and unheard of. Over the years society has gotten better with treating women with enough respect to give them the opportunity to be industry executives, receive equal pay and work jobs that were typically seen as too manly or strenuous for women to handle. 

Axe spray 

This ad oversexualized women to the point where I couldn’t comprehend how it was approved to be aired and viewed by the general public. The women in the ad were dressed in very revealing bikinis and were running through the woods towards the man spraying the axe like wild animals which is pretty dehumanizing in my opinion. One thing that I noticed was that all of the women in the ad were young, skinny, and white. There weren’t any curvy or plus sized women in this ad, no one looked older than 30 years old and I think I saw one African American female in that entire video that contained at least 100 or more women. There was a major lack of race, body size, and positive gender representation in this ad and those who watch it may be under the impression that only skinny white girls are desirable by men. If I saw this ad on tv I would definitely be disgusted with how the women were being portrayed as mindless animals that should be seen for their bodies and what they can give men. The ending line even says “spray more get more” which is really suggestive. Just by having a fully clothed woman smell a man's cologne and give him a compliment or something along those lines, this ad easily could have been subtle. But the creators of this ad knew who their target audience was, men. If they could appeal to them visually and feed their egos by showing an average joe having a flock of girls running after him after using this product, they would make a huge profit off of it. Advertisers count on the insinuation of the ad, more women, to sell their product to the intended audience, men.