WE all know adverts can be bad for our health. We must take them with a pinch of salt, ignore the urge to nip to the garage for a Flake just because the power of suggestion has infiltrated our living room halfway through Coronation Street.
We’ve moved on from Hamlet happiness and booze to be enjoyed any time, any place, anywhere. Soon sugar-encrusted breakfast cereals will not darken your children’s door before 9pm.
Now we have leapt, at long last, into the 21st century with the first adverts to be banned for featuring gender stereotyping. TV ads from German carmaker Volkswagen and US food giant Mondelez are the first to be banned under new UK rules on advertisements featuring “harmful gender stereotypes” which came into force in June.
The first banned ad, for Philadelphia cheese, showed two dads leaving a baby on a restaurant conveyor belt. The other, a VW ad, showed men being adventurous as a woman sat by a pram.
Three people complained about the ad for the car. It showed a sleeping woman and a man in a tent on a cliff face, two male astronauts floating in a spaceship and a male para-athlete doing the long jump, before cutting to the final scene showing a woman sitting on a bench next to a pram. Complainants said the ad perpetuated harmful gender stereotypes by showing men engaged in adventurous activities in contrast to a woman in a care-giving role. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said that by juxtaposing images of men “in extraordinary environments and carrying out adventurous activities” with women who appeared “passive or engaged in a stereotypical care-giving role”, the ad had suggested that stereotypical male and female roles were exclusively associated with one gender.
Meanwhile, 128 people complained about the cheese ad which featured two dads leaving a baby on a restaurant buffet conveyor belt as they were distracted by the food.
Complainants said the ad perpetuated a harmful stereotype by suggesting that men were incapable of caring for children and were so incompetent they would place youngsters at risk. The ASA said the ad portrayed the men as “somewhat hapless and inattentive, which resulted in them being unable to care for the children effectively”.
Mondelez UK argued their ad showed a positive image of men with a responsible and active role in childcare. It said it chose to feature a pair of fathers to avoid a stereotype of new mothers being responsible for children. Volkswagen UK said that its ad made no suggestion that childcare was solely associated with women.
Such regulation is, of course, to be welcomed. But these cases serve to illustrate just what a fine line there is. As the respective defences for the banned ads highlight, one man’s/woman’s positive gender portrayal is another’s negative stereotype.
Adverts of yesteryear did not deal in such subtleties. Bisto, Oxo, Knorr stock cubes were all guilty. And once the women had finished utilising the aforementioned comestibles, there was all that washing up to do. Cue Fairy liquid advert.
That’s devotion for you, as they once said. But at least these women had lovely soft hands.
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