Is It For Fun or Domestication and Sexualization?.
Is advertising for children, namely little girls, a reflection of the real world or is the culture of the world created and shaped by advertising? Sadly at the onset of this new millennium, female value is determined some of which prove detrimental. Living in this consumer driven society, conflicting images of women in advertising bombard female consumers, as well as their male counterparts, with the expectations society has for women, to be sexually adventurous and simultaneously domestic, and what expectations women should have for themselves, for example being thin with ample bosoms. Those expectations feed the insecurities and fears in consumers enabling the maintenance of advertisers status quo and keeping us purchasing (Lisenby). .
Whether in reality or solely in assumption, as the primary consumer in society, women and their purchasing power or lack they are of, has been central in the promotion and sale of many everyday products. Advertising in the 1920's depicted women in the household and held them hostage there under the pretense that a " woman's work is never done." This fear of only never ending housework included the fear of failure at the work of being the perfect wife and mother; evident in the massive influx of domestic toys marketed to girls in recent years, proving this image continues to be a focus. The sex object woman took the forefront of 1970's advertising, adding to the image of the female as being subservient, vulnerable, and mindless. .
In advertising companies like Pottery Barn and Mattel; who manufactures Barbie dolls, are showing little girls to play with the little kitchens, dress up as pretty pretty princess, but still dress up and look sexy too. Little girls are no longer burdened by having an easy-bake oven, today girls three and over can build an entire kitchen, complete with sinks, dishes, microwaves, refrigerators and ovens, and the appropriate cleaning utensils, i.
