a 2014 Volkswagen advertisement presented a daughter and father driving in their Volkswagen car. The dad looks at the daughter and points out that the car has reached 100,000 miles. The little girl is not impressed. The dad replies with what if every time a volkswagen it’s 100,000 miles a German engineer gets their wings? Advertisement cuts to a bunch of supposedly German engineers wearing white coats working on Volkswagens. One of them looks a bit uncomfortable as big white angel wings pop from his back. Then it shows different clips where the engineers receive their wings. Advertisement jumps back into the car with the father and daughter. The daughter chuckles and looks back at the father and says yeah and every time they reach 200,000 miles rainbows come out of their butt. They then would show a man looking uncomfortable once again as a rainbow tent appeared around him. The advertisement was humorous but definitely portrayed engineers to be only men. While there were women in the white coats none of them had wings and none of them were presented as engineers in the advertisement. The only leading female role with the white engineer coat had no wings and was a subject to an inappropriate joke towards women where the man’s wings came out and hit her and she turned around and slapped him in the face. They also present a little girl as someone who wouldn’t care about a Volkswagen making a small assumption that women don’t care about cars or have little knowledge on cars and engineering as well. They also portrayed the men engineers as your stereotypical Smart nerd like character. All of which are a bit older and a bit less attractive with glasses and a clipboard. This puts a big stigma on people who are engineers or are well educated in a field of science or math. As we could imagine this advertisement is definitely for male viewership and possibly specifically male fathers.
Shared by: Ashley Evans
Image Credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2JARlABe2o