Above, I have posted a commercial advertising the Ford F-150. I wanted to illustrate how this commercial is directed to specifically one audience. That audience is most always men. Often in a lot of truck commercials, men are the primary audience because of multiple factors. But I believe that a big part of how trucks became associated with men is due to our schemas.
Schemas are cognitive structures that represent knowledge about objects, people or situations. Schemas essentially guide behavior and predict behavior of others. We create schemas about different groups, genders, races, professions, etc., that surround us on a daily basis. When I first saw this commercial, it brought about many different thoughts.
The first thing I thought when I initially saw this advertisement is why are trucks, for majority of the time, aimed towards men and not women, too? In this commercial, Ford is essentially assuming that men are the only ones who hold down labor intensive jobs, who work hard, who are physically able, and therefore need to drive big, durable trucks. It clearly says in the commercial that this truck "can help load cargo and find lost tools" all while men are seen loading the truck and lifting heavy objects. There isn't one single scene in this commercial where women are incorporated. It is very interesting to me that trucks have become a symbol of manliness and strength. Even the logo for Ford, "Built Tough", is targeted toward a more masculine audience. There are many circumstances where women drive trucks and work just as hard as men, but for whatever reason Ford doesn't want to associate their trucks with femininity.
My second thought, or question, is how did this schema become relevant to our society? I understand that trucks are great vehicles for work that is labor intensive and they are necessary when it comes to hauling trailers, loading cargo, going off-roading, etc. While all of that makes perfect sense, what strikes me as odd is the mere fact that women are rarely, if at all, seen in truck commercials. We, as a society, have created a stereotype for trucks. A stereotype is a widely held fixed and oversimplified image or idea about a particular person, group of people, or thing. For example, a common stereotype is that women can't drive. While watching this commercial, it came to me that this might be another reason as to why women can't be found in truck commercials for the most part. Because society has created the stereotype that women can't drive, the stereotype that trucks belong to men has been established as well. Society has constructed the stereotype of a man to be big, strong, tough, emotionless, and hard-working. Society has, in contrary, constructed the stereotype of a woman to be small, dainty, dependent, emotional, and not as physically able. It is, to my belief, because of these stereotypes and schemas that Ford doesn't advertise to women.
We can also examine this from a different perspective. For example, it rarely happens where men are seen in cleaning product advertisements or commercials. It is common for cleaning supplies to be targeted toward women more so than men. This is because, like I stated earlier, we have created very specific stereotypes for women. We see women as being the "woman of the house", the mom, the one who takes care of everyone, the one who makes a house a home, etc. In many cleaning product commercials, you'll see a woman going around the house cleaning with the specific product being advertised. You wouldn't see a man at home, taking care of the house and cleaning and doing tasks that have been cut out for women to do for as long as we've lived. You're more likely to see them working, getting dirty, doing heavy-labor activities, like depicted in the Ford advertisement.
Below, I have posted an example of what these cleaning commercials look like:
Overall, this commercial demonstrates that the schemas and stereotypes that belong to our society today, even the ones formed from older generations, still influence how our society operates as a whole today. The way we think as individuals, what we associate different objects with, and what we all hold as merely a "belief" instead of a fact, controls how we live. Stereotypes and schemas govern what we wear, what we drive, what kind of music we listen to, what we eat, what we think, and most importantly, who we are.
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