Hello,
Little late with this observation but I have only just seen the advertisement.
Just before the strike of 2.00am, in my room, I sat and watched some YouTube videos and an advertisement that played before one of them made me pause the video and question what it was reinforcing. What?
As a matter of principle, I refuse to turn off the advertisements on YouTube, as despite Google’s big chunk they take, content creators sometimes live off this income. If I relied on money from YouTube and the people who watched my videos turned off ads, I would be gutted. By turn off, I mean in the naughty fashion of installing a Google Chrome add-on called ad-blocker or whichever one is available now.
The advertisement is for Gillette. Of course, the small fortune they have spent on the advert will have been about the message but also the lure, and lure me in did it do. The pan of the camera towards Becky and the deep, luscious tones of the voice-over attracted my attention and as a story of love throughout a man’s development pursued I continued watching. Nice, short, pretty.
But then the few simple words – “Every man is ready for his” made me annoyed. Why “every man”? Why not some men? I checked GilletteVideosUK’s YouTube Channel and of course there isn’t a video about a man falling for a man at school and then a ‘real’ man in his later years. Why?
It is these small comments in advertisements seen by millions which go to reinforcing heteronormativity – the idea that men are men and women are women and men should like women and women should like men. No.
Clearly Gillette is not for homosexuality. HomoGillette I think not.
What do you think?
Here’s the advertisement:
Sam
