Women's Role In Pro-Feminist Advertising

Although the Always “Like a Girl” commercial attempts to reshape the mindsets of people by making them “think” more about their treatment of women, their solution to this problem is to “rewrite the rules” (AlwaysBrand). This vague statement gives no clear course of action to uplift girl’s self-esteem and demonstrates how ineffective the Always commercial is in being a pro-feminist ad. Is it even plausible to think the Always ad can actually be effective in changing the negative stigmas of women? These negative outlooks society has on women are not illegal; there is no law that claims people must empower women. The problem, though, is that continued insults make people genuinely believe that girls are weak and inferior. If people have this harsh
Consequently, the producers are exploiting the topic of feminism as monetary gain for selling their certain products. While marketers present this feministic theme, they still spotlight and present the common negative stereotype of women. Dr. Golden from the University of Texas states, “Marketers have more extensively studied the relationship between consumer behavior and the global self-concept” (Golden-Allison 599). In other words, Golden suggests that marketers use the worldwide stigmas and concepts to relate products to consumers so they will be more likely to purchase them, never claiming if these common stigmas or concepts are positive or negative. While some may believe that the female audience is relating to this commercial because of its support of empowering women, I believe it is the opposite. In the “Like a Girl” commercial, the aspect women are relating to is the constant derogatory idea that women are a weak gender. Women relate to this because they have the most emotional connection towards it; almost every woman has felt undermined by the opposite sex due to common jokes. This forges a common bond, a shared burden of the stereotypical stigma of weakness. Women may feel a sense of hope with the “Like a
Based on the theme of the commercial, Always does hope to change this disgrace, but in order for them to relate this product to people, they need to bring this negative notion to the forepart of the commercial. Always believes by making this stigma widely known, they can start to change the world’s view of women. I disagree. Even if the Always commercial changes the minds of a few young girls who are forming their self concept and identity, the environment still has a major part in influencing their views. Myers comments, that most adolescents are confused with their own identity, so they tend to adopt their own from other adults or parents (Myers 159). That being said, instead of just targeting the easily malleable brains of today’s youth, Always should also be targeting middle age adults (the parental generation) to try to enforce the notion of changing the rules and empowering young girls. Unfortunately, many adults maintain persistent derogatory stigmas of women because the older generation has already grown up with their own set of gender roles and common stigmas of the world. This emphasizes the point that it is more difficult to change a societies outlook on a certain group, specifically young females because the older a person becomes, the more set in their ways and less likely to change their opinions (Myers 161). In the “Like a Girl” commercial, there