act@pur-phy.UUCP (Alex C. Tselis) (12/04/84)
The following is from my wife. Her opinions are essentially my own so I feel doubly justified in sending this out. -------------------------------- Re: Male vs. Female Commercial announcers The gentleman who pointed out that there were more male announcers than female was absolutely correct. I used to work in advertising & I know that that is done on purpose. Even for supposedly "feminine" products, such as tampons, in which women do the bulk of the ad, there is usually a male "voice-over" which frames or concludes the ad--assuring the consumer that such & such a brand "really" works. The reason that this is done is that in survey after survey, people rate male voices as sounding more "authoritative" than women's. Advertising both reflects and reinforces this stereotype. And whenever various groups have asked advertisers *not* to reinforce certain stereotypes, advertisers' responses have been that they are in business to make money not to change the world & that if they used only women, their clients' products would suffer. Therefore, if you are offended that your particular brand of soap or tampons or whatever doesn't seem to be pushed merely by women, write to the manufacturer & complain &/or threaten to boycott the product. (The drawback to threatening to boycott is that male voice-overs are so omnipresent that you may be unable to use *any* tampons if you boycotted *all* of the tampons pushed by men.)