"Taking care of my home. Is a dream, dream, dream..."- NO WAY!
Given the fact that we have been covering the gender stereotypes' topic in our Intro to Advertising class, our professor showed us the following sexist ad:
The Hasbro's Rose Petal Cottage ad reinforces the pre-determined role of housewife and mother associated with women. However, I find it extremely unacceptable the way this ad tries to "force" the stereotype in such young girls, by reinforcing that this is all their lives should be about, taking care of the home, serving their guests, cleaning, cooking, nannying their babies... No way!
I truly do have a problem with this commercial, therefore I will be reworking the ad to break its negative stereotype.
First, let's start by totally taking this jingle off the ad, "taking care of my home" should not be a "dream, dream, dream" to any little girl out there.
Second, I would change the house's pastel colors for bright full-colors, I would use simple red roof, yellow house, brown door and windows.
Third, I'd add more children in the ad, both girls and boys, to make the product's audience heterogeneous.
Fourth, my ad would be filmed in the outside of a house, probably in the backyard, where there is grass and the children could be free to let their imagination flow.
Fifth, my house would not have neither a laundry room nor a "baby room". I would make it more plain, for the kids to decide what they want to bring inside of it.
Sixth, I would change the name of the product, because "Rose Petal Cottage" does sound quite girly and that would not be my target audience since I'm trying to reach both genders. I would call it "The Play-House" or something like that.
Last, from there a totally new script would be written in which boys and girls would be playing together at the house, and a heterogeneous jingle, maybe sung by all children in the ad would be playing in the background.
Well, hopefully I'm not the only one who found this ad to be overly negative in the way it portrays gender stereotypes.
Ads should be used to lessen the negative pre-determined roles associated with gender, instead of reinforcing it, especially when such a young audience is targeted.
By saying that, now I'd like to know from you, what do you think about this ad?
Thank you for accessing my blog,
Isa
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