Transformation project

GAP ad, Real Simple Magazine, March 2013

My transformed image

I chose to use a GAP advertisement from Real Simple magazine (March 2013).  The original ad is a two-page spread of a little girl and boy wearing colorful GAP clothing placed in a beautiful meadow.  The boy holds a balsa wood airplane while the girl cuddles some fresh picked flowers. The airplane, although made from wood, represents strength, power, and man made technology. The boy is standing, confidently, with his arm raised looking out and directly at the viewer. GAP is clearly buying into the stereotype of boys being interested in more masculine types of toys, airplanes.  While the girl is frolicking in the meadow, collecting flowers with out a single worry.  She is crouched down, eyes hidden from the viewer, dressed in varying shades of pink accepting the typecast of gentile innocents.

            The interesting, and quite ironic, element of this advertisement was the language the designers chose to use for the names of the jeans GAP is marketing:  “Straight” and “Skinny”.  I’m tired of the skinny jeans concept and chose to use humor to change what the marketing directors are trying to express.  If their intentions are to make a statement about gender and to feed it into our culture, then why not take it a few steps further and have a conversation about “Why be straight? and Why be skinny?”  Flowers should be neutral.  And little girls should eat cupcakes and not have to think about being skinny or not.  It amazes me that this is an advertisement for Baby GAP.

Melissa Frost