Ethnographic Exercise 2: Gender in Children's Advertising

The original version of this exercise had students looking at the advertising during Saturday morning cartoons, but more recent student feedback indicates that the ritual of Saturday morning cartoons has fallen victim to the 24-hour availability of cable TV programming. That said, there is still programming that is aimed at children, and advertisers still target children in their advertising. There are cultured assumptions about what kinds of activities boys and girls like, what colors are associated with each gender, and how adults interact with children based on their gender. Advertising both uses these assumptions and reinforces them. What I want to you do is to look at some of this advertising and analyze how gender is constructed.

The Assignment:

Watch at least an hour of programming that is aimed at children. More would be better, but an hour will suffice.
For each advertisement, decide who the target is... is the ad aimed at boys, girls, or is it aimed at both or neither?
Take notes on the advertisements you see... You can use the attached note taking chart as a starting point, or you can use your own categories of gendered assumptions.
Pay attention to how many advertisements target boys as opposed to girls. How many are gender neutral or gender inclusive? If both genders are shown, are they treated the same?
Write up your observations... based on these commercials, what does it mean to be male or female, masculine or feminine in our society? This narration should be 350-400 words or so.