Mr. (and Mrs.) Clean

For my last Ad Review, I decided to dive further into stereotypes. Cleaning ads in the past have often portrayed women as the only ones who do the cleaning in the household. I have seen media in the past where women look so happy to be cleaning their entire houses, while their husbands begrudgingly join in. While some women do like to clean, this generalization is not very realistic. Silverman and Rader (2012) explain that ads like this influence how we read gender roles (p. 390).

However, there seems to be a change in this stereotype trend, as more and more cleaning companies are incorporating men into their commercials. For example, we can compare these two Mr. Clean commercials below. One is from 2002, and the other is from 2017. They are drastically different in how they send the message that their products do a good job getting things clean.

2002:

(Video Source: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmnEUlfOVhU)

2017:

(Video Source: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozuWoZITX3Y)

In the most recent commercial, we see that the woman does not look excited about the cleaning tasks that are awaiting her. When she realizes that her husband is eagerly ready and willing to help, she can’t contain her excitement. Mr. Clean has made an attempt to move away from the idea that only women are motivated to get the cleaning done.

I also came across an interesting article, which explains how the U.K. is working to put a stop to advertisements that have "damaging gender stereotypes." I think this is a good idea, as many of these advertising stereotypes are outdated and irrelevant in today's society.

You can find the article Here . 

Reference:

Silverman, J., & Rader, D. (2012). The World is a Text: Writing, Reading, and Thinking About Visual and Popular Culture (4th ed.). Boston: Prentice Hall.