Week 9: The "-isms"

Week 9: The “-isms”

The first example that I thought of was Dove’s recently retracted add. The add showed a model with darker skin shedding a brown t-shirt. She was then replaced (through tv magic) with a white model wearing a tan t-shirt. While it was not necessarily meant to be racist, it was. Many people were offended, and they removed the add. Sometimes it amazes me what makes it out of the brainstorming stage. Everyone needs to make sure that they discuss every angle an ad, story or campaign could be taken to avoid this type of backlash.

One example of sexism that I encounter often is in the salon. Because the majority of our clientele is female, all of our marketing is geared toward women, and many times the language excludes men. What is even more interesting is that we recently brought on a male apprentice. This changes the way we need to advertise as well as how we need to refer to the stylists as a whole. Before, we could easily use feminine pronouns. Now, we need to be cautious of pronouns and titles.

The editing mistake for this week was from a website about resizing rings. The second sentence is a fragment sentence and should be combined with the third sentence using a comma instead of a period.