UK regulator set to ban ads depicting bumbling manchildren Ads depicting manchildren incapable of carrying out basic household tasks, and women in the role of Stepford Wives clearing up their mess, are to be banned in a crackdown by the Advertising Standards Authority. It follows a review conducted by the watchdog following the public's reaction to the "beach body ready" advertising …
I am old enough to remember when cable TV first appeared in the US. The beauty of it was that because we were paying for the service the cable stations would never have ads on them. 40 years on and I'm paying out the wazoo for TV and seeing more ads on every station.
And, no, ads don't cause everyone to drool like proper Pavlovian dogs. Between recording shows and racing through the ads, to muting the TV during ads, getting a cold one during the ads, or just plain ignoring them, I can safely say ads have no impact on me or my thinking. I KNOW they are lies with only a tenuous connection to the truth and reality trying to either directly separate me from my money (commercial ads) or indirectly separate me from my money (political ads).
Will be Breastfeeding (until someone works how to make men lactate)
Vaginal Thrush cream (yes there are ads for it and men don't have one now do they...)
Makeup aimed at women (as opposed to stuff for men, and yes there is some)
Will they have to advertise Makeup where the subject is a man?
Come on now ASA you know you want it to happen.
Will be Breastfeeding (until someone works how to make men lactate)
Men can lactate with enough of the right hormones. Men are known to lactate as a result of taking certain drugs or having certain conditions that result in increased production of prolactin, which presumably could also be artificially injected. There are videos of male-to-female transsexuals lactating on the internet ... er, so I hear.
And the treatment (for external bits anyway) probably starts with the same generic cream, it's just the marketing drones prefer to segment the market. Look at 'specialist' painkillers; back pain, period pain, headaches, joint pain, Max Strength all with different prices - it's inevitably Ibuprofen 400mg.
These might include: an ad that depicts family members creating mess while a woman has sole responsibility for cleaning it up; one that suggests an activity is inappropriate for a girl because it is stereotypically associated with boys; or featuring a man trying and failing to undertake simple parental or household tasks.
Isn't this just disenfranchising the many women who are housewives, and who quite rightly point out that being a housewife is a full-time job? School run, cleaning, shopping, cooking, etc etc. Not every woman may want to do that, but those that do shouldn't be made to feel that it's something to be ashamed of either.
Preventing advertisers from making unrealistic claims and false impressions is one thing, but it seems to me that we're talking here about banning adverts which depict a widespread reality. Is it really the role of the ASA to impose some sort of metrosexual social engineering agenda on advertisers?
Just as much as it disenfranchises the many men who are househusbands.
Which is rather the point.
The actual guidelines will be drawn up by the media themselves at a later date, so I'd expect a mite more nuanced than what el reg is able to squeeze into a couple of hundred words of tabloid-ese.
I'm sick of ads showing men as bumbling idiot that need a good women to sort them out!
I'm not. I don't encounter them. Aren't ads supposed to entertain?
I do get sick of the Chattering Classes' portrayal of men in relation to women. That all-pervasive stereotype of the human male just convinces me almost daily that I must be - in BBC terms - a woman. But the ASA has no power over the Radio 4 agenda.
At least when they do negative stereotypes of the old (Victor Meldrew) and the young (Vicky Pollard) it's given to us as comedy.
Ah, the ASA. Useless, spineless, directionless.
While it is a good thing that a woman will no longer be seen to just be doing the washing up, and that a man won't be the only one shaving his face, what about the adverts glorifying gambling? Why are they left to carry on unchallenged?
And the adverts for electronic cigarettes! I've nothing against them, but the only reason they can be advertised is that they're an aid to stopping smoking. Yet I haven't seen one advert talk about that. Instead it's just "Oh these e-cigs are like the real thing!".
Children are watching both sorts of adverts, yet the ASA think gender defined roles are more of a risk to the nation than gambling and/or addiction? What a fucking joke they are.
This is everywhere.
Happy ad (McDonalds, fruit juice, cereal bars etc.) = Sun shining and footage completely over saturated
Sad ad (Funeral plans, Cancer charities) = Cold, dark and raining.
Add to that any kids ad pretty much has the black, Chinese and Indian/Pakistani ones first then a normal white UK kid somewhere further down the ad.
I'm sick of it but nothing will change IMO
Well, not if you're going to claim that black/Indian kids whose *grandparents* may have been born here still aren't "normal" UK kids like those white boys, no.
If your biggest beefs are that ad makers use well-worn cinematic tropes to enable them to get their point across in 30 seconds and they won't keep those non-whites in their place off your screen, then it doesn't matter how sick of it you are, you have to join the current century.
To be fair, the "mood lit" heavily de-saturated "sad" scenes down to near-black-and-white or some ludicrously blue/green/brown tinted abomination (and for that matter those full of shiny happy folks exuberantly bursting with energy and optimism, the likes of which I honestly never ever encountered in real life) are indeed exasperatingly annoying.
To discuss his points sensibly, if I as a mixed race person you watch this type of advert in London and 90% of the people around you are non white, then this racial mix is representative. If you live outside a metropolitan area and see the same racial mix when 99% of the people around you are white British it just looks like odd, multi-cultural agenda based adverts. In certain areas I've been I've found adverts really jarring that contain white people because 99.9% of people walking past were not white and the ad is pretty much irrelevant to them. Therefore, in conclusion his point is not necessarily racist it's just what he's used to.
Just remember that the pen is not a gift.
If you think of it as a gift then your brain is conditioned to try and give something back in return and so you are easier to sell to. If you see it as an attempt to profit at your expense then your brain is conditioned to keep the pen and they can bugger off.
Except that subconsciously you try to give something back in return even if you are consciously thinking to keep the pen and they can bugger off.
So those of us who think we have outsmarted these tactics aren't as smart as we think we are.
This made an interesting discussion point at a work meeting where we were discussing the new policy on not accepting gifts from suppliers or potential suppliers. In fact I ended up buying suppliers and potential suppliers coffee / lunch. I have no proof, but I reckon it made them more compliant in negotiations.
I would like to draw attention towards the Bikini Clad model that was part of the article. We seem to be heading for an era where people are becoming thin-skinned and complain about anything that they are too lazy to achieve.
I am solely against some advertising imagery such as models that look like twigs with a dress on and this does clearly set a bad and unhealthy example. However in the Bikini ad they used a model that was well formed and slender which looked like she simply ate right and exercised regularly. Clearly someone felt the need to complain about the ad as they did not look exactly like this model and eat 10 burgers a day. If a doctor would class a person as being of healthy shape and size then it should be permitted as part of advertising.
This is only one example but I for one believe we should be encouraging people to have a lower body fat and be healthier not banning every ad that tries to do this. (think of the NHS) I wonder where it goes next, bodybuilders and athletes being banned from the beach because they look too fit and making someone jealous.
It seems obese is becoming the new normal which is a sad thing :-(
I was stretching the truth a little (Donald Trump moment) but the point I was trying to make is that the advert was not pressuring anyone into an unhealthy figure or lifestyle and was just setting a reasonable example. People could ignore it like people have done in the past if they felt it wasn't for them.
The outcry over that advert was in my opinion was overreacting.
I personally am a tiny bit overweight. Instead of complaining I am doing something about it with exercise and healthy eating. It is a slow process but I am sticking with it and slowly but surely my body fat has been getting lower. Granted some situations are hard to lose weight. For example, I have indirect family member that has diabetes and although she does eat very healthy, she does have a slightly higher body fat compared to someone of equal diet and without diabetes. I don't think that majority of obese people could use this excuse though unless of course they get diabetes as a result of their obesity.
Where you have some 8 year-olds saying stuff that is meaningless to them.
I remember a program on advertising with Hale & Pace (or was it Smith and Jones) where they had to come up with an advert. One idea they had was getting a child to say something, but was nixed because it was unrealistic and therefore [possibly] forbidden in the 80s/90s.
Straight white men aged 20-50 have been the "bumbling" ones in adverts for decades. Why? Because you can't show anyone else being an idiot:
- Woman? That's sexist.
- Non-white? That's racist.
- Old person? That's ageist.
- Young person? Also ageist, it's not good to make fun of kids either.
- Gay? That's homophobic.
Basically, making the man the butt of the joke minimises the chance of offending minorities, but it has led to the "competent housewife vs bumbling husband" trope which is pretty much everywhere. We're now swapping one form of political correctness for another, or trying to. Either way, someone will undoubtedly find something to be offended about.
I quite like the idea of being considered useless around the house - it means I have an easy life as I don't have to do anything more than is expected of me.
If people smile condescendingly at my poorly ironed shirts I consider that an indication of success and smile back happily.
Personally, I think I'm inclined to take the perspective that *media* in general, (TV, Movies, Music, GooTube, Social media in general, even the few remaining print papers, and ALL magazines) Have been, for *at least* the last 50 years, painting a set of images, perspectives and *expectations* that have encoded *at least* three generations of folks for failure simply because the expectations that they've imprinted on this lot of humans **HAS NOTHING** to do with reality.
I mean, honestly, I've never seen an add for Tylenol that was based on a 20 something coming home to their two bedroom, 3rd floor walk-up apartment, from a 6 hour - 4/2 split shift in a call centre to a 2 year old teething and howling being held by their SO, who has to leave immediately for a 12 hour overnight shift as a security guard, and all three of them taking different variants of it. And to be honest with ourselves, the above scene is a SHITTON more realistic in this world than anything that makes it into advertising....
<Right after the lawyers, *anyone* connected to advertising>
100 years actually, since the birth of mass media.
"The spectacle is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images."
"In a consumer society, social life is not about living, but about having; the spectacle uses the image to convey what people need and must have. Consequently, social life moves further, leaving a state of 'having' and proceeding into a state of 'appearing'; namely the appearance of the image".
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