If you want to feel depressed about society’s definition of gender roles, look no further than advertisements. Whether you’re watching an ad for dish soap or beer or goodness knows what else, the message remains the same: “Women are crazy! Men are stupid! Buy our product!!!” My least favorite example? This irritating whipped cream ad, which equates men to slavering dogs, while women look on with disaffected irritation. Excuse me, but good whipped cream should turn every human into a ravenous beast, okay?
Guess what? I’m not the only one who feels that way! Apparently, we millennials — with our dangerous post-gender world-views and fluid theories about gendered socialization — have started to frighten advertisers a little bit. What if these gendered advertisements don’t work on us? (Goodness knows they don’t work on me.)
According to a survey by Canadean, our millennial attitudes could “disrupt” marketing teams. The results say that 60% of millennials “prefer to be unique.” In other words, we care about our “personal brand” — and we might not want to define ourselves with a sexist laundry detergent, or whatever. Also, the researchers theorize by 2025, “gender fluidity will become the norm.” It’s so cool that they figured out the date for that. Put it on your calendars, folks!
I’m used to hearing about how lazy millennials supposedly are (sigh) — so it’s nice to hear that we also have integrity and humanity, damn it. Yes, I am choosing to interpret “personal brand” as “integrity and humanity.” Because … that’s my personal brand. I can get behind the idea of millennials ruining capitalism with our gender feelings. Right on. Let’s keep that up.
If this means advertisers have to stop banking on lazy, horrible stereotypes in order to sell products — great! Although they’re going to have a tough time getting past the ad-blockers that we millennials can’t stop using, due to us hating advertisements so much. Oh, and corporations are also going to have trouble convincing us to buy anything, given that millennials are under-employed, don’t own houses, and so on. Ha, ha. Have fun figuring that one out, fat cats.
(via Twitter, image via Quotesgram)
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