Ready to Give This a Try.

Today, I read the Liesbet Van Zoonen’s article Feminist Perspectives on the Media, which is about the different forms of feminism and feminism in cultural studies.  I decide to look the following television commercial and try and present the basic view of how each group of feminism would perceive the following ad.

                The liberal feminist would see this ad as an addition to the female stereotype of the mother and wife taking care of the home. They would be upset because Von Zoonen states that liberal feminist want “general liberal principles of liberty and equality should apply to women in society”(35). This ad is an addition to the stereotype of woman and liberal feminist would feel this way because  the solution for them is that “women should obtain more equal positions in society, enter male dominated fields and acquire power” (35).  This pertains to the ad for it is displaying the woman as an individual that looks after her clumsy husband and she takes out the trash.  Liberal Feminist’s main objective is to surpass the household wife and women being perceived as sex object to being equal to men.

                The radical feminist goal is to be proud of being different. They could perceive this ad as taking pride in being shown as smarter than the men show in the commercial. The first few depictions shown are the men have the wrong type of garbage bag and the women have the right trash bag brand. Radical feminist think women should come together (36). This aspect of the ad is a little bit more difficult to discuss because Von Zoonen mentions that the radical feminism want to bring out the abuse by males in society (36).  One of the topics that the article focused on was the fact that this version of feminism focuses a lot on fighting the pornography industry. Radical feminist may look at the fact that it was middle age males that probably produced this ad.

                The social feminist would be upset with this portrayal because how the women in this commercial are being perceived to this ideology of women stereotypes. They would also take into consideration the fact that the last woman is African American because they do “not focus exclusively on gender to account for women’s positions, but attempt to incorporate an analysis of class and economic conditions of women as well” (38).  They would also notice the fact that the women are all in a particular age group of around 30-45 years of age.

Source:   Feminist Perspectives on the Media by Liesbet Van Zoonen’s