What is Representation?
In media, representation is when people portray certain groups of people and take action or speak on behalf of someone. Representation is really often seen the most in commercials, where many different groups are being portrayed and is very encouraged so more people feel more included no matter where they came from or what they believe in. Representation wasn't as big and grand until a couple years ago, and that's when people started including different groups of people instead of one or two certain groups.
In this ad, we can clearly see that this ad's intention was to include different types of people from different backgrounds. The ad shows a great representation of different ages, races, religions, genders, and even orientations. The ad is also not including the average stereotypes of the different people they want to represent, such as including that blondes can wear yellow or that redheads can wear red. This ad's goal was to be able to recycle not just clothes, but also fashion in general. The ad wants to project that beauty and fashion can be different and that it's okay to embrace your own type of fashion, which also helps every single member of the audience feel both included and represented.
The effect of this ad could be that for people that feel afraid or anxious to be able to embrace who they are, this ad can show that all types of fashion is beautiful and that they shouldn't hide it or be afraid to show it.
The Tide ad is about a woman that is criticizing the way her daughter is dressed and how she wishes that Tide wouldn't work so well in getting stains out of her daughter's clothes so that she could throw them out. There is a big stereotyped problem in this ad, starting with the mother, who stereotypically representing the way females are "supposed" to wear clothes by wearing feminine clothes with the color pink, which is a widely known color to represent femininity. Compared to how a female shouldn't dress, which is being represented by her daughter. The girl is wearing baggy and camouflage colored clothes, which is stereotypically supposed to represent how boys dress. It can be noticed in the mother's voice that she doesn't approve of her daughter wearing boys' clothes when she mentioned how Tide shouldn't work so well to get the stains out of her daughter's clothes, or how she mentioned that it was too bad that the clothes weren't ruined in the wash.
This ad has a negative effect to the audience that this certain gender has to wear a specific color or a specific kind of clothing. It's blinding people to think that no gender is allowed to be able to wear anything that isn't out of their "zone" and some might feel pressured by society to dress and be someone that they are really not.
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