Normal sexism

Now that women have the right to vote, birth control and (supposedly) equal rights in the workplace, the need for feminism might be called into question. Do gender inequalities truly affect us on a daily basis?

I say absolutely yes.

The other night, my roommates and I gathered around to watch “Wife Swap,” a show that I have deemed the greatest achievement of the decade based on its unparalleled entertainment value.

I couldn’t help but notice after a few commercial breaks the types of advertisements that were shown repeatedly. It’s become the norm for male bonding beer commercials to reign supreme during football events, and during soap operas or shows like my beloved “Wife Swap,” it appears that cleaning products and diet ads rule the commercials.

The type of commercials aired during specific shows are clearly targeted at the demographic supposedly viewing the programs. But it’s not just the overwhelming division between commercials shown during allegedly male or female specific programming.

Rather, it’s the commercials themselves, fully loaded with gendered messages, that I think carry a heavier weight.

Nearly all cleaning ads feature women as the sole users of the cleaning products. Because it is so consistently exploited as the image – commercial-to-commercial, product-to-product – it becomes the norm, and further, what is expected.

For those who say feminism is for women, perhaps what is most alarming in these ads are the ways in which men are portrayed.

Often times men are seen as incapable of cleaning or not knowing the elusive, mysterious secrets of the effective way to wash dishes.

Most often, the dad and kids are on the couch reclining, while mom happily whizzes by to vacuum. These commercials blatantly offend men’s intelligence, who I am fairly certain are competent enough to do a the laundry and load a dishwasher. In the process of insulting their intelligence, these ads are really telling us that men are not supposed to know how to do these things because it crosses gender roles.

When gender roles get blurred, dangerous things happen. I mean, if men start cleaning, before you know it women will be on the couch with their girlfriends watching football on Sundays while men slave away in the kitchen.

The more we actively pay attention to these images, the more we realize that they are everywhere, bashing us in the head with their repeated messages.

Because these images are so overwhelmingly present in our culture, they nearly fly under our radar.

Of course, commercials aren’t the only place we see these gender differences explicated to us by the media. There’s the continual sexualization of female characters in movies. There are unequal rights for homosexuals. Men are still expected to exhibit hyper-masculine qualities, and if they don’t, their sexuality might be put up for question.

And, of course, who could forget the wage gap, which for Indiana women means that they earn 72 cents for a man’s dollar, six cents lower than the national average.
So even though women can wear pants and leave the kitchen, there is absolutely more work to be done.