Getting Angry at Ads: Why I miss Target Women with Sarah Haskins

The other day I ended up on an awesome website that examines media images through a sociological lens and I came across a post about "ever-fabulous" Sarah Haskins. Not only did this conjure up memories of watching her Current TV segment Target Women with my past roommates, it made me miss her humour.

I can admit that I am often angry when I see ridiculous media representations of women (and other marginalized groups). Sometimes I get frustrated because my fellow audience members don't disagree with the advertising messages as vehemently as I do, if at all. I have trouble taking advertisements lightly because I am aware of the concrete impacts they can have. Additionally, having taken a course on media and feminist studies, I have a tendency to approach commercials from a theoretical perspective and to connect them to the big picture of oppression.

Here are some examples of problematic advertisements. The first one features some colonial imagery while the others mostly deal portray sexism, specifically featuring white women. (If you have any questions about why I interpret these as problematic, let me know in the comments and I'll be happy to explain).

In sum, ads usually piss me off.

Which is why I find Target Women to be refreshing and Sarah Haskins to be inspiring. I (finally) created a Twitter account last month and was excited to find Haskins. She had a baby(!) and is still funny. Whether you've seen these before or not, I'm sure you'll enjoy them. I've included three episodes (about chocolate, hair and skin care) in this post. There are dozens more available here.

  

So, what do you think of Target Women, Sarah Haskins and/or all those advertisements you see everyday?

P.S. Click here to see some more advertisements that specifically relate to body image and women!

P.P.S. I'm also adding the favourite Target Women episodes of cg (fellow contributor to this blog):