Sunday, October 26, 2014

Isms

Sexism

This print ad comes from DC Metro in Dec 2013:

http://media.nbcwashington.com/images/652*367/20131204+Metro+Ad.jpg

This ad, while perhaps not intentionally sexist, still comes across that way. I actually used this ad as part of a project in my Visual Communication course this summer. Further research yielded that the creators of the ad found nothing sexist about it; they claimed the ad was just demonstrating a casual conversation between friends to help educate the public about changes coming to light rail – really? The women in our class even claimed they would never “casually” talk about shoes like that.

Racism


I found this ad online, it’s for a new show on Fox which started in September, but was pulled from Los Angeles area buses due to controversial content. A couple of the nicknames listed could be conceived as racist, especially the ones for the white male doctor and the black female nurse.

Ageism

I was not able to find an example of ageism in the form of a print ad on-line but I am reminded of an episode of The Office where Creed is mock-interviewing for a promotion and says: “Hi, my name is Creed Barton and I am 29-years old…” (even though his character is probably anywhere from 60-to-65 years old in the show). I think this is a real problem; people being afraid to share their ages in an interview, I know that someone in my family struggled with this in the past few years after being let go from a company with what seemed like a career-long position.

Heterosexism

I also could not find an example of heterosexism in a print ad but I know that this is an ongoing problem as well. When I was growing up my friends and I always used the word “gay” to describe something that we thought was dumb or stupid; in more recent years I have replaced that word with “lame”. While not producing quite the same shock-effect that perhaps an 18-year old (we were all one once) would like I feel this is a much better word to use.

Editing Mistake

From an email my wife received this past week: "...is invited to dinner in a Pumpkin demonstration..."

Uh... how do you get to dinner in a "Pumpkin demonstration"? This demonstrates the need for correct conjunctions and phrases.

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