They should. There are a lot of us.
Since the dawn of advertising, marketing strategies aimed at female consumers have had two goals: to convince them that the products being advertised would 1) help them get a man or 2) make them better mothers and wives.
In the first category: makeup, perfume, clothing, fitness and hair care products that will make you sexier to men. You wear certain mascara, dab on expensive perfume and exercise until you get flat abs and you’ll snag a guy. Even your hair must be considered as part of your arsenal of sexual attraction (check out the $18 volumizing spray called for in this “10 Ways to Sexy Hair” article from InStyle.)
Full disclosure: I wear makeup and jewelry. I style my hair. I wear clothes that flatter me, hopefully. I view these elements as ways to express my personal style, not as symbols of some kind of single-woman-desperation.
The second category is even more insidious. Pick up any non-fashion-oriented women’s magazine next time you’re at the supermarket and you’ll find tons of ads for food items, cleaning products, toys for kids and home décor accessories – all of which you should buy and use if you want to make your family happy and healthy. These seemingly benign promotions are manipulative and damaging. Women have a tough time trying to live up to the idealized versions of wives and moms that are thrust upon them by society. I know this from friends who are wives and mothers. I know this from my own mother.
But I’m getting off track.
Time to ditch the stereotype
“How is it 2018 and many marketers still think a single woman is just a married couple who hasn’t happened yet?” That question is posed by Jess Lloyd in an AdWeek article entitled, “It’s Time to Ditch the Isolating Single Women Stereotypes and Expand Marketing Efforts to Include Them.” Continue reading