The Chicken or the Egg?

When looking at the ways in which we interact with advertising, it’s hard to say that we completely ignore it. It affects us in small ways, leading us to be familiar with products that we might otherwise never use. Alcohol is advertised to children all of the time, although we don’t expect them to drink it until they’re twenty-one years old. Everything is advertised to everyone, although the ways in which might help the product look more attractive to a specific demographic.  Helen Damon Moore writes about how The Ladies’ Home Journal is a special case of this targeted advertising, as they found the highest common denominator and attempted to sell it to its audience.

Looking at the ways in which advertising interacts with society, it is difficult to say whether or not society shapes advertising or vice versa. In many ways, advertising can convince people that a specific case of femininity is the norm. In the reading, it was stated that many women had moved away from home and needed guidance in how they were supposed to perform their femininity, so the advertisers acted as a guide to many. In this case, however, the advertisers were not seeking to define womanhood, instead they sought to capitalize on women’s purchasing power.

Overall, it’s difficult to remove advertiser’s influence on gender with their own preconceived notions, to say that they went into creating a gendered advertisement with purely financial motivations.