Violent Masculinity in Advertising

It all starts out early. Children learn things quickly. They quickly learn the aspects that they should have based upon their gender. Boys learn at an early age that in order to be considered male even they need to have specific "boy" toys. Let's take the huge Hulk hands for example, kids are learning that they need to be strong in order to be a man. There are so many adverts that affect a men's view of what a "real man" should look like. The formula for manhood is strong, assertive, confident, sexy, and powerful. A lot of ads show the dominance over women. Although there are some ads I have seen on the internet that show a woman dominating over a man for a fashion ad. Why do we see violence as being the major aspect of dominance? Men take on a Tough Guise by Sut Jhally which makes them develope an act of violence whether it is fake or not. Eventually they adapt to that nature and therefore it stays with them. A huge developement within helping men think they need violence to be dominant is the media. Television, magazine, any type of ads show men that are dominant and successful. We see successful and violent men as the dominant people in society such as Eminem. Eminem is successful in his music career and has so many fans, but why? Why do we like his music so much? What does he show throughout his music videos and songs? He sings about violence and shows power and violence in his music videos. We have been so accustomed to the violent masculinity act that we don't see anything wrong with it. People today still joke around and might say, "Yeah, my girlfriend got that bruise from me." The funny thing is that I have seen so many women allow their significant other to talk like that. They just find if funny. There's something wrong with that, joking or not.

 Even during car commercials the cars more pushed towards men use words like "speed, power, acceleration, strength". The media wants men to feel like they have to have a nice, powerful car to go along with their powerful and confident aspects. There are even political ads that show power dominance very violently.  The ad below shows the U.S. kicking Chinese out of the U.S. this shows the power and dominance of the U.S. over China by using violence. 

This political cartoon, circa 1886, uses the metaphor of washing to describe the cleansing of the Chinese from the U.S.  At the bottom it reads, “The Chinese must go.”