It’s not overt enough that everyone would notice it right away, but if you’re a gay man it might be a more familiar image, and therefore more recognizable?

Until the underlying issues of equality are resolved, I guess it’ll always be one way or the other.

You said: “If I say I like the color white, doesn’t mean I hate the color black.”

No, but you must realize, if, for example, you are in charge of putting together ads, and you choose white over and over and over again, and don’t ever choose black, whether you hate black or not, you are sending the message that you don’t like black and black doesn’t belong. Since this is an unchangeable aspect of a person, they will feel excluded pretty soon. Is this right or wrong? Probably it depends on a case by case basis, but it’s hard to think this is a coincidence.

You also said: “The world is unfair, eliminating products/advertisement that reflects that won’t make anything better.” Quite agree. I don’t see any comments that suggested banning this ad or shutting down the company. The fact that their ultra-rich clients are pretty much all the same race and gender is an extremely complex socio-politico-economic issue. But it is well within the rights of this blog and their commenters to point out the messages that the ad is sending.

I usually read all the comments to the posts that interest me. Even if I disagree with the post or the comments, it’s interesting to get different perspectives.

This blog is called “Sociological Images”. The point is to deconstruct the kind images that we are bombarded with every day to try to better understand what kind of messages they are sending us and how they influence the way we perceive the word. A huge portion of these images come from advertising. Does it necessarily mean all advertising is bad, or that an ad is unsuccessful as an ad because it has been deconstructed? No. Does that mean we shouldn’t deconstruct ads? No.

On the other hand, the high school I went to had a fair number of seriously rich kids. And the people who I would guess had enough money that I could see them having a private jet mostly saw the money-earning parent once every week or two if they still lived with them (not terribly common) or maybe once every few months in divorce cases. Admittedly most of this information I had from gossip, so it’s not terribly reliable, but honestly, if you’re making over a million a year, odds are you’re spending no time with your family whatsoever because your job is your life. So it’s not like I think they’re aiming at the target market wrongly, except maybe underestimating the number of corporate sociopaths who really don’t care.

If I could I would buy all sorts of useless crap for me, private jet included. It isn’t because they are loaded that they are supposed to give away everything. I know I have money I could give away and wouldn’t make a difference in my life, but I don’t, I keep it. The day I start donating money, doing volunteer work, well, then it’ll be the day I can complain about fat wallets.

The world is unfair, eliminating products/advertisement that reflects that won’t make anything better.

The “choice” thing is blatant product-pushing; sure, you CAN choose not to buy their product, but you’ll be a terrible person. “Oh, yeah, I’m choosing *not* to see my cute little kids whenever possible!” isn’t a very realistic option, and they have set this ad up to make it a very binary and lopsided false “choice.” (The gendered aspect is interesting, too, like Steph said: “oh, sure you’re allowed to work! I just thought maybe you *didn’t* want your kids to wind up selling drugs on the streets!”)