Thursday, February 28, 2013

Oxy Clean Commericial

While I was watching TV with my little cousins last weekend I saw this commercial come on the the Disney channel. In the opening scenes of the commercial, there is an overhead camera shot of a large group of people. The promoter says "see why all people trust oxy clean." When i was watching this with my little cousins one of them turned to me and said "wow Cristina look they are all girls!" She is 7 and she caught onto the little/ yet very important detail. This commercial really made me think. We sat down at the table and had a conversation about this commercial. There was one 12 year old boy and one 7 year old girl sitting with me at the table. The boy said to me " I think that there are all women because the moms are the ones who do the laundry."

This was very shocking to me because my cousin has very good manners and is very polite and yet he still said that women are the ones who do the laundry. I think by playing this commercial on the Disney channel was aimed at moms and there children watching TV together at night. My younger cousin brought up a very good point though, she said," what happens if you don't have a mom?" I didn't know how to answer her question so i just told her that if you don't have a mom your dad would pick up the extra slack.The boy laughed at her and said " I would never do laundry, i would make a girl do it, its what they are supposed to do." The stereotypes for women are portrayed very heavily on television and i think when children watch tv, they catch on to theses stereotypes and enforce them in their every day lives.

1 comment:

  1. I have never noticed that those commercials only feature moms,that's actually really smart of your little cousin to catch on to that! I do agree completely that television is a big proponent of exposing to you children, who will believe anything see, because through shows and ads, kids are falling into their gender role without even knowing! It was a good idea for you to sit down with your cousins and talk about this commercial because it in turn exposes them to how these stereotypes should not be the focus of their thought, especially with woman only doing the laundry.

    ReplyDelete