{"id":7204,"date":"2009-02-27T13:41:16","date_gmt":"2009-02-27T18:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=7204"},"modified":"2010-12-23T03:41:06","modified_gmt":"2010-12-23T08:41:06","slug":"where-gender-stereotypes-come-from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/02\/27\/where-gender-stereotypes-come-from\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Gender Stereotypes Come From"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times<\/a><\/em> has a fascinating peak into marketing logic. \u00a0The team at Frito Lay discovered that women prefer to snack on veggies and fruit, but that didn’t deter them.\u00a0 They’re on a mission to sell more chips to the ladies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Through market research, they discovered that women feel guilty. \u00a0A lot.\u00a0 The article reads:<\/p>\n

Though Frito-Lay had often tried advertising snacks as guilt-free, this led to the conclusion that \u201cwe\u2019re not going to alleviate her guilt,\u201d Ms. Nykoliation said. \u201cThis is something in her life. So the question for us was, how do we not trip her guilt?\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of the strategy was to follow the success of SunChips by toning down the packaging and showing off healthy ingredients in the snacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe wants a reminder that she\u2019s eating something better for her,\u201d Mr. Jones said.<\/p>\n

Baked Lay\u2019s will no longer be in a shiny yellow bag, but in a matte beige bag that displays pictures of the ingredients like spices or ranch dressing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So Frito Lay is attempting a guilt-detour.\u00a0 You don’t have to justify eating the bad-for-you-chips because they’re good-for-you-chips.\u00a0 The bag is a natural color instead of neon orange and there are actual food stuffs on the front instead of a Cheetah!\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"vending-snack\"<\/p>\n

(image via<\/a>)<\/p>\n

This is a\u00a0nice example of the appeal to nature as a marketing strategy.\u00a0 Of all of the marketing strategies out there designed to make us buy things that we don’t need and perhaps don’t even want, I suppose this is rather innocuous (though I could argue that it makes it more difficult for us to actually evaluate what foods are and are not “natural”).<\/p>\n

Alongside this makeover, Frito-Lay is also starting a website and animated cartoon serial designed to appeal to women.\u00a0 I’ve embedded the “trailer”<\/a> below.\u00a0 Notice how it affirms the idea that women are obsessed with food and their weight, at the same time that it is carefully crafted so as to encourage women to “cheat.”\u00a0 As the woman in the video says about her cookie: “So if I eat it standing up, it doesn’t count right?”\u00a0 And her friend replies: “Absolutely.”\u00a0 Everyone knows that it still “counts,” but when the one friend\u00a0eggs on the other,\u00a0we all feel more comfortable “cheating.”\u00a0\u00a0 Frito Lay foods for everyone!<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

So the commercial\u00a0reproduces the stereotype that women are boy crazed whiners\u00a0with a deranged relationship to food and an embarassing obsession with shoes.\u00a0 [By the way, Gwen and I are, like,\u00a0totally<\/em> like this.\u00a0 It’s amazing we even have time to be sociologists, what with all the traipsing around in high heels, discussing diet fads, and oogling cute boys!]<\/p>\n

Okay, so\u00a0it reproduces rather repugnant ideas about women.\u00a0 What’s the harm?<\/p>\n

On the first day of Sociology of Gender<\/em> I ask students to introduce themselves and answer a few questions including:\u00a0 “Are you a stereotypical man or woman?\u00a0 Why or why not?”\u00a0 Inevitably the majority of students will say that they do not conform to the stereotype, that they both do and do not have characteristics associated with it, that they display human<\/em> characteristics, not just ones associated with their sex.\u00a0 I then ask them:\u00a0 “What percentage of your friends and family fit the stereotype?”\u00a0 They respond similarly.\u00a0\u00a0I follow up: “How many of you regularly\u00a0find yourself starting sentences with ‘Women are so…’ and ‘Men are so…’?”\u00a0 They all raise their hands.<\/p>\n

\u00a0This, I suggest, is interesting.\u00a0 Gender stereotypes don’t come from us and aren’t validated by our actual experiences.\u00a0 Yet, we still talk as if they were true.\u00a0\u00a0 If we don’t affirm the stereotype,\u00a0where do they come from and why do we believe that they are true?<\/p>\n

Well, here’s part of the answer: We know what men and women are like because we are constantly told<\/em> what women and men are like.\u00a0\u00a0 This Frito Lay campaign is one source of this particular stereotype about women; more can be found here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Another question, and one I’d love to know the answer to, is:\u00a0 Why is it that, when\u00a0cultural messages and actual experiences contradict each other, we come out endorsing the cultural messages?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times has a fascinating peak into marketing logic. \u00a0The team at Frito Lay discovered that women prefer to snack on veggies and fruit, but that didn’t deter them.\u00a0 They’re on a mission to sell more chips to the ladies.\u00a0 Through market research, they discovered that women feel guilty. \u00a0A lot.\u00a0 The article […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[244,225,23384,329,2124,55,2096,120],"class_list":["post-7204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fat","tag-clothesfashion","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-emotion","tag-foodagriculture","tag-gender","tag-gender-femininity","tag-sex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7204"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31344,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7204\/revisions\/31344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}