Lindstrom 1 Nathan W.

Lindstrom Professor Hetherington Introduction to Mass Communications 1 October 2010

Sexism in Advertising

For a number of years now Kentucky Fried Chicken has been running a series of primetime TV spots that strongly suggest picking up an order of their fried chicken on the way home from work, and serving it in lieu of making a home cooked meal. The idea underlying this particular artifact is that many people, after a long day at the office, simply lack the time and energy to come home and spend time preparing a meal for their family. Both the artifact message and the evening timeslot in which it airs point to the intended demographic being made up of working professionals who are married and have young children (Turow). The reason this artifact is noteworthy within the context of this course is that KFCs choice of always showing a woman being the one to pick up fried chicken on her way home from work and serve it to her family clearly demonstrates a sexist bias and stereotypes women. If the husband within the artifact ever did anything beyond sit at the dining room table eagerly awaiting the fried chicken then the bias would almost certainly fade. But the fact remains that the man is never shown as picking up dinner or serving dinner: both are the sole responsibility of the woman, on top of her already having worked a full day. The stereotype, then, that providing dinner is a womans work is

Lindstrom 2 perpetuated by KFC. Also furthered is the highly sexist message that men need only work at the office before coming home to relax, while women must work at the office and then come home to yet more work. This message is given the greatest possible chance to be fully perceived by the audience through the use of simple sets, minimal lines delivered by the actors, and overall very simple vocabulary (Stovall). The good news is that revising this KFC artifact to remove both the sexism and stereotyping would be relatively straightforward. Several possibilities exist: y Show the man as picking up the fried chicken on his way home and setting it in front of his family, including his wife. Given the highly persistent stereotype about working women that has been previously detailed, the man performing these actions would be quite dramatic all on their own. y Show the man as picking up the food on his way home, and then show the wife serving it to the family. While this lacks the strong impact of the first proposed revision, it would demonstrate a sharing of responsibilities between the husband and wife. y Show the woman as picking up the KFC order on her way home, but the husband as setting it out in front of the family. This is by far the weakest of the three potential revisions. What is the effect upon the audience of this artifactassuming it is shown as-is, without any of the above revisions? First, lets divide our audience into three groups, as the effect of the sexism and stereotyping will play out very differently upon them. The three groups are: (1) men, both married and single; (2) women, also both married and single; and finally (3) children.

Lindstrom 3 For the first groupmenthe message is twofold. First, that its okay to leave work, come home, and relax. Taking care of the children, for example, by feeding them, is not your problem. Second, expect to be given a hot meal within minutes of arriving home your wife, in addition to supposedly earning 50% of the household salary, is also tasked with 100% of homemaking, such as putting dinner on the table. For women, the message is much the same as that presented to the men, except the roles are reversed and in effect she is told, This is what being a good wife means. Furthermore, she is tacitly encouraged to uncomplainingly take the disproportionate workload upon herself, and is reminded again and again that this is the key to having a happy family. It is for children that the message is most harmful. Girls and boys alike are told that this is what to expect in terms of division of labor, and this is how things work in a happy, successful family. They then grow up, bombarded with this message via mass media, and turn into husbands who expect the wife to essentially work two full-time jobs, and wives who believe themselves condemned to a life of near-servitude in order to have a happy family. This message undoubtedly affects children more than adults, as they are likely to view advertisements with the same interest in interpretation as the show itself (Turow).

Lindstrom 4 Works Cited

Stovall, James Glen. Writing for the Mass Media. Boston: Pearson Education, 2009. Turow, Joseph. Media Today: An Introduction to Mass Communication. New York: Routledge, 2009.