tide

• Proctor and gamble released tide in 1949 and this advert was circulated in the 1950s, they used a mix of print and radio advertising to reach their target audience and to create a brand identity
• post ww2 consumer boom

  after the war there was a rapid increase in technologies for the home making tide more desirable and reflective of an aspirational social status
• intertextual references

  there is an intertextual reference to the women’s land army advert : Rosie the riveter, this connotes the idea that since the war is over it is time for women to return to previous roles in maternal and domestic positions, there are further references to their work in the land army through the short hair and bandanna which would have provided a practical catalyst for working in factories and farms
• target audience

  despite the fact that women’s roles changed during the war, domestic products were still solely aimed at them , the target market was specifically increasingly affluent, lower-middle class women
• Family stereotypes

  The tide advert outlines the fact that during the 1950s the nuclear family was still the clear standard, shown through both mans and children’s clothes on the washing line depicted
• Stuart Hall - reception theory

  • pushes for a dominant-hegemonic reading through the use of direct address “you women”, connotes tide having al that she wants
  • Some women may decode meaning from the oppositional position and take offence to the reductive stereotype of female identiies
• George Gerbner - cultivation theory

  • aims to cultivate the idea that :
  • Tide is the best on the market
  • It is a desirable product for a domestic woman
  • Women enjoy cleaning and are supposed to be in domestic and maternal roles
  • repetition of these patterns of representation can shape and influence audiences ideologies
• Bandura - media effects


  audiences acquire media representations of negative behaviour

  • modeled behaviours such as women cleaning and staying at home shown through visual encoding systems of the tide advert have a powerful effect teaching male audiences to oppress women and female audiences to oppress themselves
  • we become desensitised to the harm caused by stereotypes of traditional female roles