Recently I talked with Amy-Willard Cross about the problems with stereotyping women in advertisements. We discussed The Buchanan Test and why so few commercials can pass this simple test for stereotyping women in your ads.
"While the advertisements of some companies such as Underarmour’s, Michelob Light, and Tide Superbowl have passed her test, Buchanan has found that the subservient mother role is the most popular portrayal of women. She points to drug commericials, for instance, in which men are typically shown doing exiciting things like mountain biking, whereas the women were shown buckling children into a car or doing yoga. Do women not do anything else in their lives, she wondered. Hence the origin of the Buchanan Test."
Read the full Vitamin W article "The One Test That Popular Commercials Keep Failing".
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