Analysis of Original Ad:
The original advert perpetuates harmful gender stereotypes. The advert is patronizing and reductive as it offers a patronizing depiction of a woman running a business. This is the problem I will be addressing. The advert uses the words “girl boss” to specify the market to which it is selling it business, although SEO technology is used by both female and male run business. The ad did not require the use of “girl boss”, it could have advertised itself using simple the word “boss”. This ad was released in the London Underground in the UK, where there is a low number of women in high boardroom positions. Therefore, there was no need to target women with this ad, as it reaches a smaller portion of their necessary demographic. Instead, leaving it open to both genders would have been a more beneficial form of advertising to them. This advertisement was both hurtful to their campaign and patronizing to female bosses in general as it diminishes women. However, their choice of words made it so that there is an underlying message saying that female bosses are inadequate and require further help. The lack of comment on male bosses implies that males need no help in this area, and that they can do it themselves. This implies that male-bosses are superior and can handle the responsibilities of their jobs better. This ad implies that running a business is unnatural for a woman, and it implies that she would require help doing so. The advert doesn’t promote its SEO services as an option a woman could use to help with her busy schedule. Instead, it implies that SEO optimization is too technologically advanced to be done by her. Therefore, it offers to do it for her as she is incapable of doing it herself. It is patronizing as it illustrates the female mind as small and incapable of handling such responsibility and understanding such technology.
Explanation of my Jamming Philosophy:
My alterations of the work were mainly focused on the wording the ad used. I did not alter the image itself, as it was a basic stock photo of a woman working. Although the wording was already patronizing, I changed it to clearly state the message it was previously saying. Previously, the message was diminishing women and perpetuating the harmful stereotype revolving around how unnatural it is for a female to be a boss. That is why I chose to state that in my opening sentence on the advert instead of “You do the girl boss thing”. The use of the word “thing” makes it as if a superior is speaking to their workers in a way that says that their work is not as important, whilst the words “girl boss” make it so it appears that female bosses are unnatural in the workplace. The line I added attempts to be condescending to more clearly invoke the advert’s patronizing idea that being a female boss is strange and an outlier in the workplace. Furthermore, I changed the second line of the advert to reveal their second message which is that understanding technological things like that of which their service offers, SEO engine optimization, is hard for a female mind to do. My alteration inspired to invoke a sense of ridiculousness as it should be clear how wrong and out of place this ad is. This ad was recent, it was not an advert from the early 20th century when women were first introduced to the workplace. Fortunately, there have been many advances in the world since then. Therefore, at this point in time, we should be past the point of where we consider females inferior to men in intelligence in any field, be it technological or not.