This weeks readings

After reading this weeks readings, I was extremely interested in the topic presented. In high school I took a class called Media in Society that talked a lot about advertisements and technology in our society. One cool thing I learned was that advertisements are sometimes subtle and we do not even recognize them as ads. For example, Starbucks use to give people free drinks as long as they drank their drink (which had the Starbucks logo on the cup) in a public place thats near one of their stores. To us this looks like a normal person walking while drinking coffee but really that person was placed their so we subconsciously notice the Starbucks logo. This is one of the many ways advertisements work without us knowing. In the readings gender played a very prominent role. While it is clear that women being used as object to fulfill certain fantasies of both men and other women, the role of men was not discussed as much. It is terrible how women are sexualized and looked at as props in ads but men are being hindered by this industry as well. They are constantly told to be masculine and drink beer and think of women as objects not people. They struggle to be "manly" just how women struggle to not be silenced. I would be interested in seeing what other people have to say about gender being used in advertisements because, unfortunately, it makes sense why companies do what they do, but does this mean it is ethical?