media & gender

Last week when we looked at those few slides of magazine ads, I was amazed at the pictures. I have seen ads like those before but I never really paid attention to messages they were conveying in the background. I think people my age and older have been desensitized to these sorts of ads. In my experience, I've seen ads like these but I knew what they were trying to sell or show so the way they did it wasn't as shocking. Also like we talked about, I knew those situations were posed and not real so I've never really read into them like that. I understand that if younger children saw those ads they might be confused, think those are real situations, and think that life is supposed to be that way. However, how many younger children are exposed to these ads? And how many of those exposed actually look at the ad? I guess I was just shocked at what the content of these ads were because I've never really paid that much attention to them myself. I've also noticed that depending on what channel you are watching, like cartoon network for example, the commercials are targeted at the average age of the audience. I doubt many children would see ads like those shown in class on a children's station. I think as long as you monitor what your child watches, he or she won't be much exposed to these demeaning ads.