Breaking Gender Stereotypes

Original Ad

            Madison Avenue Cookware is a company that makes high end cooking appliances and products, and apparently very sexist ads. The misogynistic ad states that, “The only thing that cooks better is a woman,” an obvious jab towards the outdated societal mindset that women should be the ones doing the domesticated roles in a home.

Potentially even more infuriating, the CEO of the company Roger Hudson, was quoted as saying, “research has told us that women do actually love cooking and they do actually love keeping their man happy. It’s in their DNA.” When women’s rights activists spoke up on the archaic and sexist ads, Mr. Hudson replied with, “settle down doll face.” This kind of obvious discrimination solidifies views on previously accepted gender norms. The reality is women need to be empowered and should feel absolutely no obligation to live up to these outdated normality’s.

The advertisement is displaying a very hurtful message towards women, and when incorporating the comments made by the CEO, the chauvinistic view is even more apparent. Other slogans used in the same ad campaign include similar images with the slogans, “enjoy your time out of the bedroom,” and “a woman’s best friend.” This entire campaign, and company, is shocking considering these advertisements were ran in Australia in March of 2012. This is a direct contradiction to the learning we have done in this course about the expected submission and oppression that woman face even in today’s world, and it truly is a sad state of marketing that more innovative approaches couldn’t have been used. The campaign says nothing about the products or their characteristics, rather using shock value to have people talking about their products.

Jammed Ad

The concept of how I wanted to deconstruct and jam this ad was by overplaying the sexism the original. Furthering the offside gender stereotypes, I placed the text, “because men are too busy drinking beer on the couch to help in the kitchen.” The entire original ad campaign spoke to women being in the kitchen and how that should almost be a sense of pride, something they should be good at and enjoy. In a sense, the marketing company I’m sure believed that they were giving a compliment, saying that women are good cooks, but rather, it oppressed them into the traditional roles that so many women have fought to break through.

Today women continue to fight through those stereotypes to become strong, independent characters deserving of everything that any other individual can work towards and have access to. I was looking to invoke the feelings that the sexism displayed is not acceptable, and the concept of having a woman cook while the men are allowed to relax and not be a part of the household duties as dated and ignorant. By furthering the implications the original advertisement had, I believe that it demonstrated how ignorant that the entire campaign was.