I have some thoughts about this.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/world/europe/britain-ads-gender-stereotypes.html?smid=tw-share
LONDON — One ad for baby formula showed a little girl growing up to be a ballerina and a little boy becoming a mathematician.
Another ad, for a weight-loss drink, asked if viewers were “beach body ready” and showed a bikini-wearing woman whose bronzed image, critics said, promoted an unrealistic standard of beauty.
A third ad, for the video game “Game of War,” showed the American actress Kate Upton scantily dressed on a horse, making it seem as though sexual desirability were a prerequisite for leadership.
Britain’s advertising regulator, reacting to these ads and similar ones, announced Tuesday that new rules would be developed to ban advertising that promotes gender stereotypes or denigrates people who do not conform to them; sexually objectifies women; or promotes unhealthy body images.
Obviously, I think that those ads do contain some possibly regressive gender stereotypes. But I’m less sure that a government agency should be “cracking down” on ads like those.
At first glance, when I read the title of the article, I thought that it might be an impairment of free speech. Why should the government be regulating such things? I’d be all for corporations deciding on their own to remove these viewpoints from their advertisements, I thought.
As I read the article, however, I started to see where the other side might be coming from. This paragraph, in particular, made me think about parallels to the banning of tobacco ads on television here in the United States:
“Our review shows that specific forms of gender stereotypes in ads can contribute to harm for adults and children,” said Ella Smillie, the lead author of the report. “Such portrayals can limit how people see themselves, how others see them, and limit the life decisions they take.”
Does the promotion of certain gender stereotypes have similarities to the promotion of tobacco products to children? For right now, I don’t know.
In the end, I’m still iffy on this new policy. I’m still concerned on the impact this might have with the protection of freedom of speech by the government. Maybe I’m holding regressive viewpoints, I just don’t know.
Your thoughts?