As the LGBT community is becoming more and more accepted throughout society, companies have begun to incorporate people of the LGBT community in advertising for their products. Julia Hanna from the Harvard Business School explores the stereotypes of LGBTQ+ members used in advertising in her article “How Advertising Depicts Gays and Lesbians.” In this article she discusses how companies who are uneducated on the many different types of people in the LGBTQ+ community resort to stereotypes made by society giving people a false idea of what everyone in the community is like. While the LGBTQ+ community is becoming more represented in advertising, the images and the way they are represented in many cases re enforces stereotypes, so may work against the intended effect of increasing tolerance and awareness.
What many companies fail to realize is that their advertising can have a “positive or negative effect” on how people “perceive one another.” In her article, Hanna says that “ the characterization of the LGBT community” in mainstream television commercials is “sorely lacking in diversity, with stereotypes ranging from diva queens to scary leather men.” I find this to be true in many commercials I see, even today in 2017. One commercial that is a wonderful example of this, as stated in the article, is a commercial for Salon Selectives hair products.
In the commercial an effeminate man sits with his lap dog in a hair salon working as a hairdresser, alluding to the stereotype that all gay men are feminine. Later in the commercial we see the man looking very out of place and uncomfortable working as a car mechanic now that his clients can do their own hair thanks to the product. While many people may find this amusing it gives people, especially people only exposed to the LGBT community through television and media, a false idea of what all members of the community are like when really there are many different types of people. I believe this is unfair to the community because they have worked so hard for so long just to be accepted by society, and simply because companies are uneducated and lazy, people have stereotypes in their head of how LGBTQ+ people should act that completely contradicts what the LGBTQ+ community has tried to.
In the commercial an effeminate man sits with his lap dog in a hair salon working as a hairdresser, alluding to the stereotype that all gay men are feminine. Later in the commercial we see the man looking very out of place and uncomfortable working as a car mechanic now that his clients can do their own hair thanks to the product. While many people may find this amusing it gives people, especially people only exposed to the LGBT community through television and media, a false idea of what all members of the community are like when really there are many different types of people. I believe this is unfair to the community because they have worked so hard for so long just to be accepted by society, and simply because companies are uneducated and lazy, people have stereotypes in their head of how LGBTQ+ people should act that completely contradicts what the LGBTQ+ community has tried to.
The main issue with these companies is not that they are choosing to depict the LGBT community, but it’s that when creating commercials they do little to no research and depend only on what they know of the community through society and media, which more often than not are stereotypes. According to the article out of all the companies that have LGBTQ+ members in their advertising Subaru is one of the only companies that has a member of the LGBTQ+ community as their spokeswoman, using the Lesbian tennis player Martina Navratilova in their ads and commercials, which was her “first major endorsement since she came out in 1981.”
Other than that and a few other companies such as Cover Girl who’s spokeswoman is Ellen DeGeneres, little to no companies actually use real members of the LGBTQ+ community. As a result of this combined with not doing proper research they have no way to accurately represent every part of the community, which completely cuts out many different types of people. Companies typically only represent white gay men, more often than not having them be comically effeminate. While there are gay men in the community that are effeminate, not every gay man is.
As I stated before companies also rarely have ethnic diversity in their LGBTQ+ commercials, creating an idea in people's heads that only white effeminate men are gay when that is simply not true. Take Shaun T for example, a world-renowned health and fitness expert, TV host, motivator and creator of many famous fitness programs including INSANITY, HIP HOP ABS, FOCUS T25, INSANITY MAX:30 and CIZE, who also happens to be a gay black man. My sister Asia swears by his fitness programs, having completed his program INSANITY more than three times. A couple years ago she saw a post on his instagram with a picture of him and his husband, and said to me “Wait, Shaun T is gay? I had no idea! He doesn’t seem gay.”
This is exactly what is wrong with the way media portrays the LGBTQ+ community, in this case gay men. The reason he didn’t “seem gay” to her-which is ridiculous in itself because how can anyone seem like their sexuality?-all goes back to the way companies make gay men out to be white and effeminate, never black and manly. For society to progress this needs to change and change soon.
Future research question: What are the risks & benefits of marketing to the LGBTQ+ community?
I found it interesting that you proposed the idea that companies are saying they look for LGBT member to join their team and support the LGBT community, but they only do this through advertising and advertising can use actors. Also some advertisements give people a stereotypical feel of the LGBT community.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, this is a really great blog post! You do a great job of providing many examples of stereotypes, both from the essay and personal examples, so as a reader, I believe they exist and that there isn't enough work done to stop them. the one suggestion I have would be to tell the audience why the stereotypes are harmful and why marketing should stop stereotypes in the advertisments. Tell the audience why this matters to you.
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