A woman’s image in the car advertisements: Stereotypes and sexism

Abstract

A woman’s image in the car advertisements of the last two years has been analyzed in the paper. This segment was chosen because the car advertising is very illustrative of the social roles and gender stereotypes. Driving is presented as a man’s intrinsic matter though statistics of traffic police disclaims this belief. To trace the changes in cultural codes with respect to the woman’s role from ancient times down to our days the author reviews ad video scenarios and heroes identity in the context of mythological consciousness. Having studied 50 videos the author reveals three dominating images of a woman in modern car advertisements, namely: lady vamp, caregiver, silly girl. Recurrent themes continue to be widely used in car ads: men are myth heroes, while women are objects. Considering the fact that ads are known to capture and crystalize social preferences, it can be concluded that the popularity of such scenarios prove a high level of sexism in the modern society.