Handouts

Excerpts from the Canadian Advertising Foundation's voluntary guidelines on gender portrayal:

• Advertising must avoid the exploitation of nudity and the irrelevant segmentation of body parts.
• Boys and girls under 16 must not be portrayed as displaying adult sexual characteristics.
• Adult women must not be portrayed as girls or with childlike characteristics while maintaining adult sexual characteristics.
• Social and sexual interactions must portray women and men as equals and must not reinforce stereotypes, such as male dominant/female submissive.
• Using or displaying a woman's sexuality in order to sell a product that has no relation to sexuality is by definition sexually explosive.
• Advertising must not portray sexual harassment as acceptable or normal, and should avoid representing women as prey or objects of uncontrolled desire.

snycorva.cortland.edu/~russellk
Created by Kathryn Russell
SUNY Cortland - Philosophy
Last modified on 8-13-99