Representation Analysis

     Hello everyone!! Today I’m going to be talking about representation in the media or more specifically, representation in marketing. I want to touch base on two commercials for different brands, one does a phenomenal job at being diverse and having a great message while the other does the complete opposite.

    The first commercial was created by Axe. A company that caters to men’s grooming therefore having a target audience of males. The video shows multiple swarms of women in tight bikinis acting extremely animal-like as they try to reach an unknown final destination. It is later revealed that all the woman are trying to get to a man who is applying axe body spray and has a huge smile on his face; A phrase that states “Spray more, get more. The Axe effect.” Then appears on the screen. This commercial should not have been aired for a number off reasons. The portrayal of woman in this commercial is extremely degrading as they are shown to be desperate for this man and presumably sex. This is an unrealistic and gross depiction  of women and how they should be complete savages over a man. This commercial could also be extremely harmful for boys as it may set low standards on how they should treat women and could put them in a mentality that dehumanizes women. Overall, this advertisement should not have been aired and is extremely harmful.

    The next advertisement is one for H&M. H&M is a clothing company that does not mainly target a single gender. The commercial shows a diverse group of people, each with a voiceover that says something that may not be considered a fashion abnormality in our current society; A few examples are “Wear a short skirt if you’re a man” and “Show your panty line.” The commercial ends with text that tells the audience to recycle their used clothes at H&M. I do not have the words to describe how much joy this advertisement brings me, I am thinking of kids insecure about their weight or hair color that will watch this and grin at their televisions at the sight of someone that looks like them being the face of a huge clothing brand. Something that H&M did incredibly with this commercial is how they included people that are overweight, transgender, or amputees without making it about their looks but rather what they are wearing; It is incredibly important to normalize bodies and people that some may not consider “perfect” as it will help others gain confidence within themselves. H&M encouraging customers to recycle clothes at their stores is very important as it helps them save the environment and helps customers learn about why recycling things is so important to our world.

    Overall, there is representation in every piece of media and wether its positive or negative is up to the companies creating it. The H&M advertisement that I spoke about shows just how easy it is to include positive representation and how there is no excuse not to. Our society is not made up of skinny, white, cis-het people so it is time that our media mirrors that.