Media Consumption and Gender

I think gendered media is hard to escape from, especially in such a capitalistic society. Even if it has been so long since the emergence of the Journal and the Post where we first started to see literary gendered material and commercial messages, we now not only see it in our magazines, but also in our tv commercials, billboards, and online content. To a certain extent, I can understand that a company’s main concern is making its big bucks. They benefit from getting people hooked on their products, by enticing their viewers with idealized images of what they are supposed to look like, act like, etc. However, this creates an endless loop of consumers who invest in these type of materials only maintaining these beliefs and reassuring others that these beliefs are “truthful”. I feel like this has only been made more clear through the FBI-esque methods social media platforms use for advertising. Whether it is on Facebook or Instagram, whenever I open my app or log in online I am surrounded by ads from Almay, L’oreal, Pantene, and some even bougee-er brands that are not coming to mind right now. The multimodality of the platforms has only functioned as a way of reinforcing what was started to be communicated in magazines like Journal and Post, having these ideas reach us faster and with more frequency. It makes me wonder to what extent this compares to the effectiveness of messages from gendered media in the 20s and if they work better at communicating these ideas than the ads that appear in things like J-14 magazines.