Saturday, September 1, 2012

Sexist greeting card



I recently came across this picture of a greeting card for sale at Wal-Mart. While I am used to noticing sexism directed against girls and women in products, such as in this girl's top from JC Penney,


sexism or negative stereotyping against men in advertising and products flies more so under the radar. Finding this greeting card opened my eyes to some of the terrible gender stereotypes against men that permeate our culture, namely the "bumbling idiot" who is dumb and even smells bad! This got me thinking about other examples of this negative trope; characters on sitcoms, the "incapable" man in commercials for cleaning or baby products, etc. 

Some questions that occurred to me were, how does the "bumbling idiot" advertising trope negatively impact both men and women? Are there other examples of this I'm forgetting?

Thoughts?



No comments: