I have my doubts about how effective media literacy efforts alone can be at combating gender stereotypes. It seems like an uphill battle in the current environment. But About-Face is one organization that is trying to do something. I blogged about it here over on my blog Oversold.
About-Face is an organization dedicated to helping give women and girls information with which to fight negative images in advertising and to raise consciousness about gender stereotypes in advertising. They engage in campaigns like this one to raise awareness of the manipulated images in ads like those for Victoria’s Secret which they argue lead to many women and girls having unrealistic expectations about how they should look.
This looks like a good project over all. What is more ambiguous is whether when an advertiser is plugged as a “winner” in the site whether it just converts the cite into a promotional arm for the business in question even though other ads might not be as good. Still, this seems to be a worthwhile endeavor. Check out their website here.
I am not sure if trying to link and enlist commercial efforts doesn’t end up being problematic for a lot of reasons (some of which I will discuss in a subsequent post on the new Dove campaign), but I generally applaud this effort.
