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The billboard is an advertisement for a new washing powder called Vanish. It shows a woman sitting with pink bubbles around her, a pile of clean laundry and a jar of the washing powder.
Training exercises
1. Use digital techniques to replace a man with a woman in this advertisement, or cut up advertisements from magazines and play around with moving images to challenge gender sterotypes.
2. Collect advertisements for washing soaps and powders, what are the trends.
3. Visit a supermarket on a busy day, observe how many men/ women are purchasing washing powders.
4. Read "Learning to be a Dad" and/ or "Zimbabwe: Men are carers too" (below). How do these representations of men challenge the strategy behind the advertisement.
Additional training resources
Picture our Lives: Gender and Images in Southern Africa, Chapter three, p32, Archetype, or Stereotype? https://www.genderlinks.org.za/docs/training/picture-our-lives/pic-ch3.pdf
This section is very relevant to subtle stereotypes that reinforce the way things are and that we are often more comfortable with. Are these archetypes or stereotypes? When does an archetype become a stereotype? What is the effect of this?
Related GL Commentaries
Missing the mark? Gender and advertising in Southern Africa
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall?
Gender equality not finding its way past the front door
Learning to be a Dad
Zimbabwe: Men are carers too
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