Before Diving Into The Current State Of Male Roles In...
Before diving into the current state of male roles in advertising, it is necessary to
review past gender stereotypes and how they have developed in the past. Looking at
advertising through the media from a social determinist standpoint, the existing
cultural and social values and progresses are what determine how genderroles are
portrayed in media. This would go against the cultivation theory notion that the media
used to portray men and women are what shape our cultural and social ideologies.
Grau and Zotos (2016) establish this the mirror versus the mold debate and note that
this debate is a continuum (p. 763). Existing social values may impact the strategies
of advertisers, but at the same time, the advertisements we are... Show more content
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Now, we may frequently see women engaging in non traditional activities such as
purchasing a car, being actively career oriented, or acting as a voice of authority
(Hatzithomas et al., 2016, p. 893). Now that women may be shown in traditional
male roles, newer roles for men that contain traditional female portrayals have
become available. Thus, the past and present progresses of women have affected
how males are shown in television advertisements. The stereotypical male figure
portrayed in past advertisements has been shown as a representation of masculinity
(non feminine, independent, heterosexual, tough, and risk taking and at times a
visual representation of the male body as a sex object (Baxter, Kulczynski, Ilicic,
2016, p. 971). Due to aforementioned circumstances, notably the rise of feminism,
the growing financial success of women, and the effects these progressions had on
roles within the family, men may now be depicted as softer or more homely. Pleck
(1987, p. 93) mentions the new father being on the rise, depicting fathers as more
caring, kind, gentle, loving, just, supportive, and domesticated , and this new father
image has been evolving ever since. Baxter et al. (2016) sought to investigate how
consumers react to male and female roles in advertisements for baby products (p.
974). Participants were shown ads of both fathers and mothers bathing a child.
Because of nuclear family