The Gender Ads Project

Advertising, Education, Activism

Exotics
Background: The exoticization of women occurs on many levels in popular culture. This trope brings out the concept of intersectionality—Kimberle Williams Crenshaw's idea of how women of color and women of lower-class positions are affected by greater forms of institutional and individualized oppression (1993). In the case of this trope, European American women are presented in exoticized contexts that often connect to objectification, sexualization and male sex. The Ads: All of the ads deal with some form of exoticization, be it a Nordic version (#s 3, 4), or Middle Eastern (# 9), English (#s 6, 7), Egyptian (# 11). Discussion Questions: (1) Why are women commonly presented as exotic objects? (2) Are there examples of male ads that present men in similar contexts of the exotic? (3) Is there a connection between gender and the exoticization of cultures? Does this connection impact the types of ads that we see?
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