Gendered Voices in Children's Television Adlvertising

The goal of advertising is to lead consumers to new products that will allow them to feel a sense of satisfaction. To maintain the motivation of the consumer to spend money, advertisers need to develop several advertising strategies to make the newest goods and services sound desirable. However because of ability, age, and other factors children do not purchase products,it is the responsibility of the parents to ensure the well being of their children. With this fact advertisers appeal to themes of fantasy and fun in children's advertisements. Advertisers use the image-based influence that emphasizes gender identity, a popular strategy used when designing a campaign for a younger audience. In addition to imaging advertisers use linguistic markers, some obvious some subtle, that advocate gender stereotypes. Advertisers put so much thought into these campaigns because children are seen as a training base for consumer culture, they are suggestive to fantasize and do other things kids are expected to do. Because advertisements are becoming part of American culture,children are thought of having the potential to want to spend
instead of save their money. Advertisements offer a model as to how children should behave thus enforcing gender roles for instance commercials where only girls play with barbies or commercials where boys play with leggos.



Reference: Johnson, Fern. Young, Karren. “Gendered Voices in Children's Television Adlvertising.” in Critical Studies in Media Communication. (Eds) EBSCO Publishing, 2003.