Challenging stereotypes in advertising
R.A.G.E
“Advertisements guide thinking, action, and behaviour as people come to accept mainstream ideas through visuals. The most crucial of these is what it means to be a man or a woman. Ideas about how to feel, dress, look and behave and how to interact with other men and women is the bedrock of culture in which we live.”– Pamela Morris
Can brands can be gender transcendent?
Can they be marketed to men and women without alienating either gender?
We at The Ministry of Representation and Gender Equality are tired of seeing the same old gender specific tropes used in advertising.
It makes us angry that men and women are portrayed using gender stereotypes that have no basis in reality. It is an insult to those the advertisement is aimed at and is lazy writing for the advertising industry.
The reality is that men are rarely used in the same visual that women are unless it’s for comedic value and that women are mostly eye candy for the men, even when the product is for women.
Gender is not biological (like sex) but refers to a socially constructed set of behaviour patterns. We, as a society, have created these boundaries that fence us in; which means we can tear these boundaries down.
The Ministry of Representation and Gender Equality believe that it is time to speak up and speak out on inequality in advertising. It is time to R.A.G.E.
R.A.G.E was my final honours project for my Ba(Hons) in visual communication and graphic design at Croydon School of Art. It was born of the question of is advertising, more can advertising be without gender? Over the course of 12 weeks an identity was born, which was "The Ministry of Representation and Gender Equality" or R.A.G.E. The final product was a selection of adverts designed to show the meanings, sexism and advertising tropes hidden in television advertising. A website showing all the research and development accompanied this too.
