In the 21st century, people always promote gender equality. Men and women are equally capable to do whatsoever things and develop whatever interests they want. In fact, there are still some situation in which people treat or construe men and women differently in our daily life. For example, beer advertisement.
Nowadays, it is very normal for both man and women drinking beer. Yet, according to my research, many local beer advertisements use male artists to be their spokesperson and promote their products. On the other hand, female artists normally act like a kind of sexual object to tease or seduce the audience. This is basically irrelevant to the advertising products. It just tries to induce the audience to think drinking beer will lead them to an exciting adventure with sexy ladies. The intention of producing this sort of advertisement is undoubtedly to cater male customers’ expectation of drinking beer. Also, many local beer advertisements use muscular male artists to promote beer. It is clear that they try to convince mainly male audience that drinking beer can bring them a cool image.
However, we can see the cultural difference in the western beer advertisements. Not just men can be the leading role in beer advertisements, women can also be the same. For example, “GINGEN beer” produces an image to the audience that women can also drink beer very happily and enjoying. As shown by this advertisement, western culture stresses more on gender equality in their daily life comparing with Hong Kong’s.
Student: Lai Hoi Ying, Ada
Dear Ada, The discussion of gender representation is nice. Cultural differences are also considered. In your forthcoming ethnographic interview, you can integrate the arguments here and make reference to the idea that identity is a process, which is more about discursive construction rather than biological given.
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