Gender Typing Seen in Commercials

I was interested in the comments you and some of the students were making about gendering and how tv commercials make a huge contribution to that issue, just like fairy tales. So I watched some kids' channels this week, and it was quite amazing. The ads aimed at little boys all involved either fighting, winning, or being in control. The first I saw was some sort of batman set up with little figurines. The batman figurine could swoop down from a special rope and knock over the "bad guys." Everything shown on that commercial that the young boys could do with this toy involved violence. The next I saw was a car racing kit with transformer vehicles. It said that you could "be first to the finish line!" The entire commercial played strong rock-in-roll type music and showed the boys competing with their little cars and yelling when they won. It was all about competition and winning. The little girls' commercial was just as you said. It was all pink and purple and happy music played. The particular ad that I saw was a bunch of little girls putting makeup on dolls and styling their hair. I could not help but wonder if this is all our society thinks little girls should spend their time on. While boys are out fighting for justice and racing their cars, girls should be learning to look pretty. However, the last commercial I saw was perhaps the most disturbing. It showed two boys playing with a large remote-control dinosaur. He looked pretty cool. He could roar and walk and shake his head; but the disturbing thing was that while the announcer was saying something like "you control his every move...you are in control," the boy was making it walk over to the little girl and her dog to scare them. The dog looked scared and she screamed and both little boys thought it was so funny. The boy with the remote who was "in control" knocked the girl's card tower over with the dinosaur and then actually pointed and laughed. What is this teaching our young boys? It may be teaching that you need to dominate women and always make fun of their weaknesses. It is also showing boys that it is okay to scare girls and laugh at them. How can we expect men to ever take us seriously and respect us if we teach them this from early on? In our current fairy tale, "Beauty and the Beast," the beast is scary and intimidating to the girl at first and then she sees him as he is and accepts him. Perhaps men are afraid that if women discover who they really are, they will not accept them. This may be worth pondering for a future blog...
The gender typing in the tv ads really was sad though, and I am going to start noticing them more.