Gender Representation in Tobacco/Alochol Advertising

I found the above article to be very interesting. The essence of the essay is in the beginning line "The lie of advertising is that we do not experience the same pleasure suggested in their images when we use the product." It's such a simple, obvious sentence, but it still makes the point that people buy products because they want to experience the same effects as in the ad: a peaceful, easy or exciting, sexy lifestyle. Will the boys fall for me if I wear this perfume? Will my life be that much easier with the Shamwow? Clearly, with the alochol and tobacco focus, those two types of advertising are particularly guilty of emitting a sense of enticing pleasure, nostalgia or hopes.

I will admit that I am not as familiar with this type of advertising (ads for alochol or tobacco), but throughout my life the cultural perceptions have been that wine and whatnot is more sophisticated than plain old beer, but for beer Budweiser is...well, the king. Or that cute set of toads in a pond.

I found the author's mention on the four groupings for this ad to be intriguing as well. I had not considered couples, nor "the Others" (immigrants, other ethnicities and minorities) as a separate group from men and women. Yet it does make sense, that a single man would have to be marketed at differently than a typical heterosexual couple in an established relationship. And why are the Others depicted as exotic or degrading? If minorities are rising in the U.S. population and the white majority will soon be the minority, shouldn't this aspect of the advertising change?

Here we come now to the complaint department: I had no idea that nictoine was an appetite suppressant, so I would have to say that no, most girls that I know of would never dream of smoking to become thinner, or to look cool. I could be wrong, but I think my generation is past the "smoking is cool" idea that other generations went through, simply because the number of commercials and product placements for smoking is far less. On our prime time sitcoms, yes, characters may smoke, but they won't give product placement during the commercial breaks like many 1950s sitcoms did.

Finally, one question I had was why the Surgeon General's warning was shown multiple times throughout the text. Were there supposed to be pictures and ads there?