For my Cultural Geography class we had to analyze how ads now a days were gendered and I found a perfect example, I actually think this company has made a good job since you think of them and instantly think of masculinity.
AXE sells men’s fragranced deodorant. It distinguishes it self from its competitors by making commercials always based around the idea of encouraging masculinity and sexism. The targeted audience is clearly single men looking for partners because why would a married man want to have girls falling over over him? As much as men may secretly want it, that would bring trouble wouldn’t it? So the intended audience is young men looking to have fun and have plenty of girls around them.
So what makes this ad gendered? The first thing that makes it gendered for males is the scenery of a single man apartment, clothes on the chair deep blue walls and undone bedding. Fragrances have their own identity, soft and subtle for women and extravagant and elegant for men. AXE has a reputation of a masculine fragrance in every single one of their products so the single fact that is an AXE ad makes men interested in it and women pretty much look away since it is not aimed for them. The ad has an attitude that men have: picking up women, flirting around and have them falling for them. This attitude and behavior describes what characterizes people from one gender to another according to the gender definition.
Pretty interesting how even products have genders isn’t it?
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/28/axe-deodorant-ad-banned-angels_n_1064150.html