COP3 Practical

I initially decided to create a booklet, that exhibited some of the adverts I had looked at in my research and design gender neutral alternatives. I chose a selection of advertisements to show how varied the sexualised products are, from ice cream to beer, all of these ads have used sex to sell. I wanted to ensure they were playful and non threatening, in some cases perhaps pointing out the obscurity of associating food with sex.

I have started to create the short A5 booklet to accompany the posters to be made out of the images I create as alternatives:

I decided to keep the layout consistent throughout as I wanted the image on the right page to be the main focus of the spread.

Before I had managed to finish, I began to rethink the concept of the booklet, as I felt that the synthesis with the written essay was not clear, and that there wasn't a totally direct link between the two.

I did not want the reader to have to search for the connection, I wanted it to be clear from the off set. After realising this I decided to start again, still creating a booklet and series of posters but creating a direct link between them and the essay.

COP3 Practical

My written element to COP3 focuses heavily on misrepresentation in advertising, through the use of a stereotypically perfect male/female. In some cases, the reason for this can be justified given the target audience of the product, combined with the manner in which the public view themselves. Women may buy a certain brand of makeup to live up to the stereotype that's put forward with it, perhaps they buy a more expensive brand to appear as being able to afford it.

However, there are some instances in which using a stereotyped man or woman could decrease the size of their audience, one of these being the manner in which some companies brand food. Using a scantily clad woman may decrease the female percentage of buyers, and vice versa. Below are some examples of sexualised food in advertising:

It is a common joke against advertising that to sell a mediocre product, all you need to do is add an element of sex to it. However, with food adds run the risk of it appearing less appetising due to the nature of the image. I may say this as a woman, given that the majority use women, but the ads featuring close to naked men also give me no desire to eat the food covering his dignity.

COP3 Practical Ideas

I initially wanted to identify some subjects and routes I could go down that were relevant and applicable to my essay and found that there were three aspects to gender stereotyping that I potentially wanted to use:

• Housewives - I am keen to identify the tendency that ads have to stereotype women as the homemakers, targeting them for advertising products such as washing up liquid, laundry detergent, vacuuming and so on. There have been a couple of cases in which a man has been featured but this was seen as odd to an audience. While the man is doing the laundry it's still a female voiceover, which makes the chore appear more as a woman's task.

• Perfumes - In my essay and research I have frequently looked at the stereotypes of men and women that seem to accompany the advertising of fragrances. No other product seems to explicitly exhibit men and women in compromising positions in order to sell something, and so I could potentially create or rebrand a perfume brand using only illustrative  imagery over photographs.

• Food - The least necessary incorporation of gender stereotypes in advertising. Food is and should always be neutral, not one chocolate bar for a man and one for a woman. In some cases it can be harmless, in others, unnecessarily offensive, when a piece of food can be pinned to one gender.