Advertisements and Culture

In the early 2000’s, Olay came out with an ad that highlighted the important roles of a woman: “wife”, “mother”, and “shoe aficionado”.  These words were strategically placed next to a seemingly glowing and happy woman who held up her wedding band in pride. The close up shot of the woman allows the audience to place emphasis on her face and to really feel like Olay has had a significant impact in her life, along with shoes, of course. While the ad may be seemingly effective, it draws on stereotypes that are prevalent in society today. According to this advertisement, the only things that women value in life are the roles of being a wife and a mother and meaningless things such as shoes. It indirectly states that women do not have greater ambitions in life than being those things. It places very low standards on women. At first, I assumed that this ad was in the late 1950’s because that was a time where being a wife and  a mother were the only important things for a woman and they did not hold stable jobs or aspire to be something greater than that. It was shocking to find out that it was actually from 2002 because that proves that those sexist and stereotypical thoughts have carried on in society today. Although it would be assumed that this ad aims to empower women, I would argue that women are actually ignored and marginalized. The target audience is the woman who is a housewife and who has free time to take care of herself. In that sense, it ignores all the women who are not those things. It places a generalization on women everywhere and actually insults the women who hold stable careers and aspire to be more things. By placing the wedding band in the picture, it shows that the woman values the fact that she is a wife. In my opinion, that is empowering men because it shows that a women values a man in her life and that men are one of the “important roles” that a woman plays. Overall, this ad seems effective and friendly when someone first looks at it. But right as you look closely and examine it more, it is clear that this ad takes all of those existing stereotypes of women and plugs it into their in order to sell more.