Advertising is an important social phenomenon. It stimulates both consumption and economic activity models, lifestyles and a certain value orientation. Consumers are faced with massive daily doses of advertising across multiple media. With the continued onslaught of marketing media, it is foreseeable that it will affect our individualism and society as a whole. What are the effects of advertising today? Does television reinforce the dominant ideology of contemporary culture? How do they shape society? Can the media help break down the barriers of gender roles? Consumers' minds can be changed, opinions shaped. I believe that advertising in the media today is changing slightly, but it will not change drastically. Commercials and advertisements still implant the usual gender roles in our society today. Will the media ever change? The methodology used was research, analysis and observation of magazine advertisements, as well as watching commercials for three full hours to help expose advertising in the media and how it seems to characterize our society today. Commercials are a way for gender roles to be displayed in society. When you see an advertisement for a mechanic, most of the time the mechanic is a man. But when you see an advertisement for household cleaning products, normally the face you see is a woman. In other words, the media can help break down barriers to how gender roles are portrayed in society. The more those women represent strength on television; it will therefore encourage them to gain self-confidence. When considering women's and men's television consumption, it's easy to forget that the hours they spend watching television represent a substantial portion of each week. Excluding hours spent sleeping, women spend about 1 hour out of 4 hours a day watching television. Men, not far behind, spend about 1 in 5 hours each day watching television (Butler 1980). Overall, these concentrated views of manhood suggest the many ways in which advertising negatively affects men by narrowing the definition of what it means to be a man in American society. Reviewing advertisements and commercials, I realized how much the role of the strong, silent, authoritarian, militaristic and threatening male pervades social ideals. While it is neither realistic nor positive to emulate, it also shapes men's view of themselves... middle of paper... people are dying of lung cancer and secondhand smoke. This is a positive outlook for the future. The media must implement positive images of men and women in their advertisements and commercials around the world. Television allows people to see more and therefore choose what they want to be, but unfortunately this choice for girls and boys is often full of impossible contradictions in what is shown, meaning that television perhaps further confuses an issue that it might help solve. be resolved with fairer and less stereotyped representations of women and men. Advertisers make a lot of money promoting this garbage; however I believe there may be slight changes in the future. On the other hand, it will take some time to get close to the big adjustment. Works Cited Anderson, Margaret L. 2000. Thinking about Women: Sociological Perspectives on Sex and Gender. Pearson Education, Inc. Butler, Matilda. 1980. Women and the mass media. New York, NY: Human Sciences Press. Melville, Dennis A.; Cornish, Ian M. “Conservatism and Gender in the Perception of Sex Roles in Television Advertising.” Perceptual and motor skills. 1993, vol. 77, p642.