Gender Stereotypes 1
Running head: GENDER STEREOTYPES
Heineken’s Underlying Message: An Ideological Critique of How Children are
Exposed to Gender Stereotypes
Kayla Zakel
Ohio University
Gender Stereotypes 2
Abstract
This analysis refers to the Heineken beer commercial from 2008 titled, “Walk in
Closet.” The commercial is used as an artifact to display common societal gender
stereotypes of women and men. The commercial displays the stereotype that all
women love shoes and all men love beer. This paper uses the ideological approach
of analysis in order to study the roles that women and men are expected to uphold
in society. Further, this paper focuses on the ways in which children are socialized at
an early age to recognize and apply these specific gender roles they are exposed to.
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Heineken’s Underlying Message: An Ideological Analysis of How Children are
Exposed to Gender Stereotypes
Gender stereotypes have been present since the beginning of humanity.
People in society use gender stereotypes to determine what they accept as normal
behavior for a person based exclusively on their biological sex. Roles are assigned to
each gender based on these stereotypes. Gender roles can affect various different
aspects of life. For example, many careers are dominated by one sex. Traditionally
jobs such as nurses and secretaries have been held by women, while jobs such as
firefighters and police officers have been held by men. Gender roles can also affect
how men and women interact with each other. Traditionally women are thought to
talk a great deal about their emotions and have traits such as compassion,
sympathy, and softness. Men on the other hand are traditionally thought to never
cry and have traits such as toughness, bravery, and independence.
Although many of the assumptions about gender roles are changing, several
are still a large part of our society today. It is easy to recognize gender stereotypes,
but how do we learn them in the first place? No one ever sat us down as kids and
told us that girls should wear pink and play with dolls and boys should wear blue
and play with trucks. At what point in our lives do we truly understand that women
and men are viewed differently in society? Martin and Ruble (2009) argue that this
happens very early on in child development. In fact, “most children develop the
ability to label gender groups and to use gender labels in their speech between 18
and 24 months” (Martin & Ruble, 2009, p. 356). These basic gender labels begin
with being able to tell the difference between female and male physical possessions,
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like a tie or skirt for example (Martin & Ruble, 2009). But how can gender
stereotypes be communicated to children this young? A combination of the media,
parents, and peers reinforces these stereotypes on a daily basis. This article will
explore the ways in which children are socialized to learn gender stereotypes and
the ideas about gender that are reinforced by society.
Description of Artifact
In order to study the ideas about gender portrayed to society, one must look
at an artifact that reinforces common themes about gender. A commercial is an
appropriate example because it seen everyday by millions of people. The Heineken
beer commercial from 2008 titled, “Walk in Closet” reinforces typical thoughts
about females and males created by society. The commercial begins with a woman
hostess of a party giving her friends a tour of her home. As the group of women
moves to the bedroom, the woman opens her closet door to expose a very spacious
walk in closet filled with a plethora of shoes and clothing. The women begin to
scream and huge with excitement due to the incredible closet. Then the men are
shown screaming and hugging with the same excitement as they enter a large walk
in refrigerator filled with beer. This artifact reinforces the gender stereotype that all
women enjoy shoes and clothing and all men enjoy beer. Although many women do
enjoy clothing and many men enjoy beer, there are also women who like beer and
men who like clothing. The commercial does not show this, and therefore gives
viewers a distorted image of gender roles.
Some may argue that the Heineken commercial “Walk in Closet” as well as
other advertisements like it are just created for fun and do not have a large impact
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on viewers. This commercial was released in 2008 though, at a time when
advertisements have great influence on people’s views. This commercial in
particular had a great impact on Heinekin’s sales. Mullman (2008) describes how
Heineken’s sales increased by 1.6% after the release of this commercial. This
commercial was so popular it event inspired the Cleveland cavaliers to do a spoof of
it for their playoff commercial. In the spoof the women get very excited over a coworker who has just gotten engaged, and the Cavaliers players get overly excited in
the locker room over new basketball gear. Advertisements like these that show
gender roles continue to have a great impact today as marketing and advertising
professionals find new ways to target certain groups. Advertisements like this
impact the view of adults who view such commercials, but then go on further to
influence children who follow the actions of their parents closely. There are many
articles and a great deal of research that shows how children are taught these
gender stereotypes at a very young age.
Literature Review
We all have our own stereotypes about how each gender should act, but how
do we begin to form these stereotypes? In order to explore how children are taught
gender roles I first researched child development. This helped me to understand
reasons behind why children think a certain way and how easily they can be
influenced. I also researched where children get their information about gender
roles. Parents and advertising have both shown to be large influences in exposing
children to society’s common ideas about gender. I also explored how these ideas
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are reinforced by punishment from peers if the child strays away from the common
stereotypes.
In the book titled Gender Development the authors Blakemore, Berenbaum,
and Liben (2009) describe the large role of parents in shaping children’s ideas about
gender by providing a gendered world from birth. Parents often do this by choosing
a gender-related name, putting the child in gender colored clothing (pink for girls,
blue for boys), buying gender-related toys (dolls for girls, cars for boys), and
choosing gender-related activities (ballet for girls, football for boys). Blakemore,
Berenbaum, and Liben call this “channeling” or “shaping”. The authors also describe
others ways in which parents influence their children’s ideas about gender. Parents
often interact different with children of different sexes. For example, parents may be
more willing to talk with their daughters about emotions, but may not be as willing
to discuss vulnerable topics with their sons. Fathers may also be more willing to
teach their sons how to do more masculine tasks such as fish or play sports, while
mothers may be more willing to teach their daughters more feminine or domestic
tasks like cooking. Blakemore, Berenbaum, and Liben also discuss how parents
serve as the most influential role models in a child’s life. It makes sense that if a
child grows up seeing his or her parents act a certain way, he or she will see that
action as the only way or what is right. For example, if a young boy grows up with
his father as the head of the household, he will more than likely expect the same
respect from his own family when he is older.
In the book Children, Play, and Development the author Hughes (2010)
discusses the impact of advertising on children. The media plays a large part in
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exposing children to specific gender stereotypes. Hughes (2010) describes how
commercials use exaggerated gender characteristics to target children. For example,
commercials targeted at young girls tend to use high-pitched voices, feeling words
(cuddle, love, etc), and take place in home settings while commercials targeted at
young boys tend to use aggressive words (wreck, battle, etc.) and use louder voices
(Hughes, 2010).
Damiano (2003) also discusses the specific impact of advertising on children
in her thesis titled Learning Gender Roles: Advertising and Children. In the research
she studies how children’s gender identities can be constructed and developed by
television programs and advertisements. Damiano’s research was complied by using
four methods: surveys of parents, interviews with children, observation of children,
and analysis of Saturday morning commercial television programs and advertising.
Damiano (2003) explains that young children do not have the cognitive ability to
distinguish between television programs and advertisements, and therefore they
cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality. This ability to distinguish between
the two is a very important component in the understanding of advertisements and
their responses to them (Damiano, 2003). If children can’t tell the difference, then
they will believe anything and everything that they see on television. Damiano
(2003) also discovered that advertisements targeted toward children generally
focus on socializing children into the traditional sex roles (pink vs. blue, dolls vs.
cars, etc.) rather than opening children up to the idea of broader gender identities.
Communication within advertisements towards children is very different for
girl-oriented commercials than for boy-oriented commercials. Johnson and Young
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(2002) discuss communication in children advertising in their article Gendered
Voices in Children’s Television Advertising. In their research Johnson and Young
(2002) discovered that the voice-overs for boy-oriented advertisements were
exclusively male, and voice-overs for girl-oriented advertisements were exclusively
female. Johnson and Young also found that the exaggeration of certain verbs was
used for each sex. For example, boy-oriented commercials tended to use words that
emphasized action, competition, destruction, agency, and control (Johsnon & Young,
2002). Girl-oriented commercials on the other hand tended to emphasize words
such as feelings, nurture, care, and support (Johnson & Young, 2002). This definitely
affects how children view the roles of each sex. If children see commercials of girls
playing with dolls and nurturing, then obviously the message that girls are the ones
who are supposed to care of kids is communicated to these children.
Commercials aren’t the only way that children are shown appropriate gender
toy choices. The packaging on toys does not welcome the idea of gender neutrality.
In the book Girls, Boys, Books, Toys: Gender in Children's Literature and Culture the
authors Clark and Higonnet (2000) describe how girl toys like dolls are always
shown being played with by girls on the packages. “Although some baby dolls are
male, no packaging that I have seen depicts boy owners” (Clark & Higonnet, 2000, p.
171). This is the same principle displayed in many advertisements like the “Walk in
Closet” commercial by Heineken. In fact, in most beer commercials only men are
showed drinking. This portrays the image that drinking beer is a strictly masculine
activity, even though plenty of women enjoy drinking beer.
Another way in which gender stereotypes are reinforced to children is
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through interaction with peers. In the article by Martin and Ruble (2009) titled
Patterns of Gender Development the authors describe a study in which children three
to five years old were videotaped playing with male or female typed toys. The
results showed that the children were ridiculed by same-sex peers for playing with
cross-sex toys (Martin & Ruble, 2009). According to Martin and Ruble (2009),
“Children make negative judgments of, and consider unpopular, peers who engage
in gender-atypical behavior” (p. 360). Even if a child’s parents raise him or her in a
gender-neutral lifestyle, the child can still pick up ideas about gender by listening to
his or her friends and watching their actions learned from their own parents.
Banjeree and Lintern also discuss negative reinforcement of peers in children
in their article titled The Effect of Social Evaluation Concerns on Gender-Typing
(2000). A study showed that children as young as four years old were influenced by
the presence of peers to display sex type actions. Children can do this by name
calling and bullying. According to Banjeree and Lintern (2000) “Evidence has
suggested that peers provide strong reinforcement for stereotypical behavior while
quickly showing their disapproval of counter stereotypical behavior” (p. 398).
These sources have an important part in the analysis of gender stereotypes
because they show that children are affected at a very early age to think a certain
way about gender roles. From birth on, children are told what each sex is supposed
to act like. Society’s ideas about gender are reinforced through the lives of children
by their parents, the media, and peers. Now that it is clear how and why these
aspects affect children at such a young age, the ideas presented by society, like in the
Heineken commercial, can be explored.
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Methods Section
The ideological method of analysis helps to examine artifacts that present
specific ideas, such as the Heineken commercial. This approach focuses on ideology.
According to Foss (2009) the ideological method goes beyond the surface structure
of an artifact to discover the beliefs, values, and assumptions it suggests. The
ideologies can reflect social, economic, political, or cultural interests. Sometimes we
do not realize that such ideologies affect how we act and think because these
ideologies are taught to us at a very young age. The ideological method often reveals
something that we haven’t seen before or did not realize had such a great effect on
us (Foss, 2009).
The ideological method is a very appropriate method for examining how
children learn gender stereotypes because most children are only exposed to
limited ideas about gender. This is because children often only are exposed to the
dominant ideologies set by the majority of our society. Growing up as a member of a
set of twins with one boy and one girl, I was fortunate to be exposed to a broader
range of toys. For example, there were not only girl-oriented toys in my everyday
play. Because I grew up with a twin brother, I sometimes found myself waning to
play with the cars and “boy toys” my parents initially had bought for my brother.
Not all children are exposed to boy and girl oriented toys growing up though.
Critiques of gender related artifacts, such as the Heineken commercial reveal the
effects of this.
Report of Findings
It is clear that today’s society teaches specific ideologies to children at a very
Gender Stereotypes 11
young age. This is done through the use of advertising, parenting, and peer pressure.
By analyzing artifacts that display specific gender ideas and stereotypes, such as the
Heineken commercial, this shows us that there is a cycle in which ideas get passed
on from generation to generation. The cycle begins with adults who have been
taught gender stereotypes. They teach their children stereotypes by doing things
such buying them gender specific toys. According to Blakemore, Berenbaum, and
Liben (2010) a child’s parents are the source of most of the child’s ideologies.
Children also see advertisements that display specific gender stereotypes. Even
when children are very young they can pick up on gender stereotypes of society.
Martin and Ruble (2009) argue that children as young as young as six months old
can distinguish between female and male faces, and children as young as two have
already developed basic gender stereotypes between activities and roles of females
vs. males. At this young of an age, children do not know any better than to believe
what they see as the “right” way to think and act. The children that are exposed to
the gender stereotypes displayed by parents and advertising then continue on to
adopt the very same gender stereotypes. The cycle continues when this generation
goes on to have kids.
The ideologies about gender that are passed from generation to generation in
this cycle have a risky effect. Sometimes it’s good for information from the past to be
used in the future so society can learn from mistakes, but in this case the ideas about
gender passed along from previous generations have become the norm. Foss (2009)
discusses the dangers of ideologies that become the social norm. The reason that
this can be dangerous is because when the dominant ideologies are seen as the
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norm or the only way to think, than anything other than the dominant ideologies
becomes abnormal (Foss, 2009). This can be negative because this leaves no room
for change or improvements, and also discourages the presence of multiple
perspectives. Foss (2009) discusses how dominant ideologies, like in the Heineken
commercial, can have a social control over people. When these dominant ideologies
become the norm, sometimes we do not even realize that our actions and thoughts
are being affected.
Generalizations about ideologies that society has are the foundation of the
ideological method used in this analysis. It’s important to realize that there are
multiple patterns of belief, but also that certain ideologies are privileged over others
(Foss, 2009). For example, a common ideology of our society is that only boys play
football. Although there are girls that go against this norm and play football, the
majority of people in our society would agree that girls normally do not play
football. Often times the ideologies that go against society’s norm are repressed or
not talked about (Foss, 2009). For example, young boys playing with dolls or
dressing up is not generally shown in advertisements or anywhere. When it is
shown, it is usually being teased or made fun of. Because of the repression of some
ideologies, the privileged ideologies become dominant, and therefore have a kind of
social control over people (Foss, 2009). “A dominant ideology controls what
participants see as natural or obvious by establishing the norm” (Foss, 2009, p.
210). Any challenges to the dominant ideology are seen as abnormal.
Contributions to the Field of Communication
My analysis of the Heineken beer commercial and advertisements like it is
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very useful in the study of children’s formation of gender stereotypes. In the field of
communication, there have been many studies that show the imbalance of gender
portrayal to children. For example, a study by Ditsworth (2001) shows the
communication of gender roles to children in the popular children’s program
Sesame Street. The study showed the imbalance in the proportion of males and
females in the broadcast, as well as the difference in attitudes of audience members
who respect and identify with certain characters more than others because of their
roles in the program (Ditsworth, 2001). Although my analysis also discusses the
distorted image of gender roles in advertising, I go further to discuss why this
affects children so strongly. This contributes to the field of communication by not
only recognizing the presence of gender stereotypes in advertising, but also
studying why the presence of the stereotypes has such a great effect on young
children.
Another aspect of communication that a great amount of attention has been
paid to is the research on the immediate effects of advertising of gender stereotypes
on children. Johnson and Young, 2002 discuss how advertising that portrays
distorted views of gender has an immediate effect of making them also believe these
views. For example, we’ve all heard the quote “boys will be boys” to describe young
boys who “rough play” with each other by wrestling or competing with each other.
Why is this though? Young boys see commercials depicting destruction and power,
and then immediately use this information to determine how they should act. If they
see boys on television fighting and competing with each other, they will immediately
do the same actions.
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According to Nathanson (2002) a great deal of communication based
research suggests that advertising can perpetuate stereotypes about men and
women, television is filled with stereotyped portrayals, and viewers' gender-role
attitudes are influenced by these depictions. There is a great deal of communication
research showing the immediate effects of advertising on children, but what about
the long-term effects? Although there is a lot of good research that has come about
in the past years, in the future there needs to be more studies done to discover the
long-term effects of this type of material on children. It’s crucial for this to be done,
especially in a time when technology has taken over a large part of our society. As a
society, we rely more and more on technology to get our information about all
aspects of life. My analysis builds on the current communication research about
gender stereotypes that are taught to children at a young age, but studies showing
the long-term effects of this would help to thoroughly understand this topic.
Conclusion
Gender stereotypes are an inevitable part of our society. We as a society use
gender stereotypes on a daily basis to guide how we act, the way we talk, and the
way we think. Sometimes we use gender stereotypes to guide our actions without
even realizing it. There are many different ways we learn gender stereotypes.
Parents create a gender world for children from birth. Advertising also has a great
effect on teaching children stereotypes because children do not know any better
than to believe what they see in front of them. Analyzing advertisements, such as the
Heineken commercial, can help us to understand where our views about gender
come from. Also, its important to realize that ideologies about gender can have a
Gender Stereotypes 15
social control on people by making viewpoints other than the dominant seem
wrong. Although gender stereotypes will always exist, exploring the issues
surrounding them can make us more aware of why we act or think the way we do.
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References
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Blackwell Publishers.
Blakemore, J. E., Berenbaum, S. A., & Liben, L. S. (2009). Gender development. New
York: Psychology Press.
Clark, B. L., Higonnet, M.R. (2000). Girls, boys, books, toys: Gender in children's
literature and culture. Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Damiano, M. (2003). Learning gender roles: Advertising and Children. Retrieved from
ProQuest Digital Dissertations. (AAT MQ77654)
Ditsworth, D. (2001). The portrayal of gender in the children’s program Sesame
Street and its effect on the intended audience. New Jersey Journal of
Communication, 9, 214-226.
Foss, S. K. (2009). Rhetorical criticism. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc.
Hughes, F. P. (2010). Children, play, and development. California: SAGE Publications,
Inc.
Johnson, F. L., & Young, K. (2002). Gendered voices in children’s television
advertising. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 19, 461-462.
Martin, C. L., & Ruble, D. N. (2009). Patterns of gender development. The Annual
Review of Psychology, 61, 353-81.
Mullman, J. (2008). With no new ads, Heineken sales sink. Retrieved from
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-188175409/no-new-adsheineken.html
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Nathanson, A. I. (2002). Counteracting the effects of female stereotypes on television
via active mediation. Journal of Communication, 52, 922-927.