‘Questionable’ is a fitting word to describe marketing towards women within the last few decades of the modern world. Fortified by recurring beauty standards and outright misogyny, women have historically been placed at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to intellectual value, which is often discernible in certain advertisement tactics.
By virtue of studying these media products, whether it is in a history classroom, criticising the efforts of spreading housewife propaganda after the second World War, or on purely a day-to-day basis, the following themes discussed become increasingly potent as media industries evolve and leave behind the image of intellectualism in femininity.
This issue came to my attention by reason of an advertisement that had appeared rather casually on my Instagram page. The ad displayed an image of a crowded auditorium with the text overlay, “kinda chic to debate international politics” and caption “its so chic, imo1”.
Upon further investigation, I had discovered that the advertisement belonged to a reputable debate programme—one that I myself am familiar with. The colloquialism of the text that jarringly contrasted to the established channel’s reputation is what first caught my eye, but what really made me linger on that advertisement was the query:
who are they trying to target with this advertisement?
When examining deeper into this Instagram channel, one is inevitably curious to explore their other advertisements. Another exhibits a list of “things that are worth your money” with the contents, “lip balm, Spotify premium and registering to our programme”. Needless to say, their motives instantly became clear. Habitually, advertisements directed towards a female or non-man audience come off as rather infantile, which I interpreted a ridiculous level of from this case in point.
The average person would agree that women are fully capable of existing in a functioning society without the ownership of a lip balm or streaming service; however, their rational judgements become flattened by corporations such as these who profit off of seeing women as, to put it rather bluntly: simple creatures with even simpler desires.
The bigger picture that this advertisement truly exhibits is the mindless notion that in order for important, societally relevant opportunities and tasks to get through to a female audience, we must wrap them in trendy, patronising and often juvenile vocabulary, in order to make it seem palatable—like a pill wrapped in ham before given to a dog.
Another example where these infantile marketing tactics are used is particularly within the “____ girlie” trend, which is an internet mode that divides different female subcultures (often separated by religion, occupation, or social groups) into a “girlie” variant. Admittedly, the trend is an innocent attempt to render a sense of community within members of subcultures, however, one cannot help but to notice it is expressed in a distasteful, artless demeanour.
By essentially luring the audience in with buzzwords and trendy products, this could insinuate the deplorable notion that women fail to contribute to a functioning world outside of social media, or plainly outside the bounds of their own sense of comfort.
However, whilst criticising the means of marketing and however corporations may choose to approach it, one general aspect that is essential to this argument is the role of trends, and how they evolve over time. It is no secret that the most efficient, often most fool-proof way of catering to a desired audience is by using whatever popular trends relevant at hand as a hook to engage audiences. Especially within the modern domain of short form content the media world operates in, conforming to the mainstream means of marketing may simply be the safest way of spreading content. So, it would be prudent to argue that these marketing strategies are more so relevant to trends in today’s society, rather than a vicious dig at women’s intelligence.
Conversely, one could argue there is another paradoxical issue at hand: do we find these trends feminine because they are witless or witless because they are feminine? We must consider that if the roles were reversed—regarding the same societal value that each gender possesses—would we find these trends as weak-minded if they were associated with a male audience?
We are somewhat trained by the patriarchy to see women as the less able, naïve gender, so it is not a reach to assume that the perception of these trends could be tainted by internalised misogyny. In an ideal world, where women are not seen as the less intelligent inferior, our social expression would be seen as equal to anybody else’s, instead of ridiculed and unjustly branded as infantile. For argumentative purposes, it is pivotal to at least consider that it is by a sense of association of small-mindedness to femininity that we might find these trends dull-minded.
Nevertheless, women have undoubtedly been seen as the less superior gender within patriarchal societies. Expected to breed and make room for male counterparts, our intelligence has always been swept under the rug and mislabelled as ovarian dysfunctions. When this translates into modern media and advertisement, an audience still might be sewn to the regressive idea that women aren’t able to process complex information, which is rendered through the childlike tone in addressment. Or we need to take it upon ourselves to embrace femininity even in its simplest forms and abandon the idea that whatever is female is puerile.