Say Cheese

I'll bet you didn't see this one coming...

I wanted to try to move away from cleaning products for a moment to look at a different type of household ad - the camera.
       For starters, a digital camera is a luxury for most, and so these ads are clearly more marketed to a middle-upper class. What is clearly so fascinating about these recent Canon ads is how they too have fallen victim to incorporating romance and sexuality in order to appeal to their audiences - a majority which I will assume are women, and here is why. In accordance with the idea that women are to be the ones who do the cooking, cleaning, nurturing of the children and so forth, it would make sense that a camera is also seen as a 'female household product'. A camera enables a woman to record her family memories so that she may then scrap-book them or print them out to frame around the home. I don't find it so shocking that companies have cleverly tapped into the use of romance in these advertisements in order to target the female psyche!
     These are my thoughts on the manner, so allow me to rant for a minute. Romance is seen as an "escape" element for many women, as Hollows puts it women seek romance to fulfill "their psychological needs, needs which are produced by patriarchy but aren't satisfied within patriarchal institutions" (Hollows 81). To continue romance almost seems to exist as a fantasy that some women need in order to be released from the oppression they feel existing within a patriarchal world. Therefore the ideal romance offers a woman the opportunity to feel nurtured, and to allow for the integration of her inner self. Advertising companies feed off these understandings in order to sell products directly to women. These camera ads attempt to sell the idea of the "perfect man"; the genuine, caring, mature, loving man that supposedly every woman longs for... or in this case the "perfect camera". So it would appear to me that the relationship between women and romance is a viscous circular pattern:

1. We (as in women in general) are oppressed by patriarchy because it creates a serious division of inequality
2. We are then bombarded with advertisements that force us to believe that we actually can be with a man (sticking to heternormative standards here) that will cherish us and allow us to be equal to him
3. We then buy mass amounts of household products that sell us this belief in order to fulfill our psychological fantasies, which do not actually exist in patriarchal reality anyways? WHAT!

     Thus romance exists merely for the exploitation of females in a patriarchal dominated world. Wouldn't you agree? My point here is not to reject the idea that romantic fantasy cannot be enjoyable and rejuvenating, but that women truly need to be aware of the honest intentions behind these ads.
Cheers
The Veiled Interpreter