Sexism
This print ad comes from DC Metro in Dec 2013:
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
http://storage.torontosun.com/v1/dynamic_resize/sws_path/suns-prod-images/1297608589831_ORIGINAL.jpg?quality=80&size=420x
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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