Critical intro

Hello readers! We are English101S students from the University of Maryland. We are all female students in scholars programs at UMD and are writing this blog to provide an analysis of the Women's Rights Movement from the 1960s to today. As women, we either have or will experience gender inequality in our lifetimes. Whether it be being paid less than a man for the same job, or facing discrimination based on our gender, we will all eventually experience some form of gender inequality. As such, we chose to analyze the use of rhetoric in commercials that utilize gender to promote their products. Through our in-depth analyses of these texts, we hope that you too will understand how women's rights and rhetoric are linked.

The Women's Rights Movement of the 1960s had a major role in promoting gender equality as well as bringing attention the gender inequalities in American society. These gender inequalities were often found in popular culture, and so we chose two texts which use women to promote their products in very different ways. The first text is a 1960s Xerox commercial while the second text is a 2017 Audi Commercial. Both texts rely on appealing to ethos in order to enforce their credibility, thus the 1960s Xerox Commercial relies on using the male perspective to promote its product and demonstrate their understanding of office culture. Meanwhile,  the 2017 Audi Commercial uses voiceover to show gender equality from a father's point of view and to show their understanding of families.

In this blog, we analyzed the major arguments used by both commercials in achieving their goal of attracting consumers all the while using women in their marketing. We determined that both commercials effectively use stasis theory by identifying a problem and using exigence to make their products seem like the solution to these problems. This blog analyzes the stasis theory at work as one commercial uses negative stereotypes of women while the other empowers women as views their product as a way to empower women.

We also analyzed how the commercials use an appeal to logos (logic) to support their arguments that buying their products will promote gender equality. This blog delves into an exploration of the advertisers use logic, or lack logic, in promoting their products. More specifically, we explore why the sexism used in the 1960s Xerox Commercial appealed to an audience in a logical way when it clearly would not have worked today. Conversely, we explore how the 2017 Audi Commercial uses its own brand of logic that uses feminism to make their cars more attractive to buyers.

Another aspect of advertisements is kairos and in turn how timing determines the choices that people make. The 1960s were characterized by the Women's Rights Movement which promoted social equality for women. Despite this change in the social scene, sexism was still prevalent throughout popular culture, especially advertisements. We determined that the 1960s Xerox commercial utilizes the commonplace sexism to disparage women and appeal to men. This contrasts heavily with the 2017 Audi Commercial which uses a hopeful tone and a theme of female empowerment. 2017 is characterized by the growing call for gender equality and acceptance of women as equivalents to men, which Audi capitalizes in its commercial. These concepts are further analyzed in the blog.

Along with kairos, pathos, or emotional appeal, is one of the primary ways in which advertisers appeal to their audience. We evaluated how the 1960s Xerox commercial uses humor and female sexuality to appeal to the male perspective. The xerox company purposefully targets men for specific reasons that are linked to logos and ethos, which we explain in our blog. The 2017 Audi commercial uses a tone of hope and empowerment while juxtaposing male and female characters in order to spark attention in its audience. Gender inequality is a serious concern that is still present in today's society, so it is essential that people stand up and fight for what is right! We hope that our blog reveals that women should not be used by the media to sell products better, but also that women should be valued and treated equally to men. We encourage all of our readers to support women, not because it will improve their reputation, but because they truly believe in gender equality. The blog posts were organized in such a way that it provokes the reader's curiosity and critical thinking. We posted the intended audience and some of the appeals before major arguments and kairos so that readers can think about and even research about the topic and devise their own argument before reading ours.