by Carrington M. Nye

Created on: August 26, 2008

Control groups, marketing analysis, target groups, surveys and more are all effective tools that advertisers utilize to sell their goods and services as well as to (hopefully) beat their competitors in the everyday campaign wars.

Print media, pop-ups, e-mail advertising, snail mail (a.k.a. direct mail), radio and ultimately the big leagues, television are how these advertisers get to us, the buying public; to encourage us with all of their vast tools of the trade behind them to sway or to change our buying habits. Even coupons have a way of encouraging us to simply try the other brand of product for less!

And they work too. There is absolutely no question of this. But how effective are those commercials that we are forced to endure perhaps even laugh at, be appalled by, or blown away by the very often comedic gender stereotyping that goes on blazingly in front of our very eyes, day in and day out? The sad truth is probably more effective than we realize.
We are the "dumb public" for a reason after all. The executives at the top advertising firms world-wide might deny that we are often called this in those closed-room meetings, but believe me, we are nevertheless.

The use of gender stereotyping in advertising has almost always been in place perhaps more so now than in times past, but the concept itself is not a new one. It is disgusting to me and perhaps to multitudes of others as well, but as far as I can tell, I am in the minority among my peers on this one. Even my dear, wonderful, completely macho man brays with laughter at the downright contempt these advertisers show for his own kind: the male.

While the smoke is still pouring out of my ears from the seething anger these types of images portray, my better half is practically rolling on the floor with laughter. Yes, men can be moved by the female moved completely to speechlessness by the presence of a beautiful face and body, but I just don't think it is to the extremes that those canny advertisers expect us to believe.

And what about those women? Well, my opinion is that while there is a fair share of beautiful women out and about in this world of ours, not all of them quite measure up to those that can land a job in television advertising! No, most of us are somewhere in between a size zero and a fourteen, with emphasis being on the right of that scale rather than the left; and are still plenty beautiful, thank you very much!

Reality bites however and fantasy sells. While I believe that a man can be reduced

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