Visualizing Gender: Exploring the Social Construction of Femininity and Masculinity through Advertisements.

Abstract

Given the immediacy and availability of advertisements as a function of old, new, and emerging technologies and media, students are exposed to a barrage of images and messages in numbers and ways unseen before and with implications not fully understood or realized. The aim of this assignment is to foster a critical understanding and reception of such...

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Details

Subject Area(s):

Race, Class and Gender

Resource Type(s):

Assignment

Class Level(s):

Any Level

Class Size(s):

Any

Usage Notes

This assignment is designed as a short paper to be completed by an individual student outside of the classroom, but could readily be adapted as an in-class assignment for individual or a group of students. It is also easily adaptable into a longer, more analytical paper.

Learning Goals and Assessments

Learning Goal(s):

1. To identify how images portrayed in advertisements construct an idealized notion of femininity and masculinity as well as identifying the power of media and consumerism in shaping everyday life and experiences.
2. To analyze the ways that these images are often simultaneously gendered, racialized, sexualized, and heteronormative.
3. To realize and appreciate the cumulative and interconnected nature of institutionalized gender-based inequality.

Goal Assessment(s):

1. Students will choose eight advertisements in four categories that illustrate the creation and depiction of idealized notions of femininity and masculinity.
2. Students will provide written analyses, employing an intersectionality framework, of the ways that these images are often simultaneously gendered, racialized, sexualized, and heteronormative.
3. Students will provide written analyses that explore implications of gendered advertisements across multiple institutional realms, such as family life, the paid labor force, education, as well as within interactions and for individuals.