Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Goldieblox Appeals to Engineers of All Genders
During the Superbowl, Goldieblox aired a commercial that embodied society's changing values towards women's roles in the workforce. By presenting young girls as future engineers, Goldieblox recognizes girl's potential to be equally talented in mathematics and physics as men. The rhetoric in this advertisement is what drives its main message. The action of the girls dropping everything and running to a meeting point portrays a sense of urgency, or exigence. The exigence would garner the idea that girls are as capable as males in becoming engineers. Diction is also a piece of rhetoric embedded in this advertisement. The lyrics of the song read "we want to think" and "girls build like all the boys." The use of these lyrics depict that females do not want to be used only for their looks, but want to be recognized as builders and creators like men are seen as by society.
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I agree with your idea that the ad puts forth the idea that females are as capable as males in the STEM fields, but I believe the title of this blog post is not true. The ad alienates boys by showing very few of them, and the ones which are shown have a dumbfounded look as if they believe that a girl would never be capable of working as a engineer.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Robert's idea. I think the commercial perhaps should show some of the boys bein encouraging to girls. Feminism is often misconstrued as an attempt to pit men and women against each other and I think in a subtle way this exacerbates that image. However, it is also important to acknowledge that a great many men aren't supportive of women succeeding in STEM fields and haven't been supportive for a long time. Addressing this is perhaps meant to reassure girls and women that regardless of negative reactions by men they can and will succeed. Perhaps Goldieblox just needs to balance the imagery.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Robert and I wonder how much more or less effective this commercial would have been if it had not had such a strong feminist message and instead appealed to all children who aspire to be engineers. What if the girls were working with the boys instead of kind of alienating them? There may not have been as much of a backlash but they also may not have gotten their point across that not enough women are engineers. I'm curious to see how this company fares in the future.
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