Erickson 1

Jacob Erickson

Professor Stoltman

English 110

24 September 2018

Controversial Gap Clothing Choices

An ad depicting young kids wearing Gap clothes is not an ad that one would think to be

controversial. It has two young kids, a boy and a girl, with outfits chosen by Gap. Both kids

appear to be happy with the outfits, the girl being declared “The Social Butterfly” and “the talk

of the playground” while the boy is described as “The Little Scholar” and a “genius idea”. The

girl is wearing a chambray shirt and a logo sweater with cat ears, while the boy wears a graphic

tea of Albert Einstein under a plaid shirt, Einstein spelled incorrectly as Einstien. The ad is trying

to show the possible outfits Gap has to offer and show.

The outfits shown are trying to capture the attention of young kids along with their

parents. The outfits are stating that if you were to buy these outfits your kids will either be

“scholars” or “social butterflies”. Any parent looking to improve their kids’ social status or

intelligence could be influenced by this ad to purchase Gap clothing. The advertisement is also

targeted towards young kids who wish to become smart and social. They are told if they

purchase these clothes than they will obtain these desirable traits.

The Gap ad is attempting to give the audience a reason to buy their clothes using

desirable traits. These traits include being a “social butterfly” and being a “little scholar”. The ad

is showing the audience potential outfits to wear around the school to be unique and to show off
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the outfits around school. These “unique outfits” can be seen as controversial though because of

the way they address the two different genders. The girl being the social butterfly and the boy

being the scholar is a controversial claim. Gap is stating that boys are the stereotype of being

unique and clever, while girls are supposed to be social and pretty.

The Gap ad shows the gender norms and biases that society has created. It states that all

young girls want to become social butterflies and social fanatics, even though this is not true. Not

all girls want to be social butterflies and it is not just girls that want to be social butterflies.

Young boys also may want to be social butterflies as well. The boy in the ad wearing the “little

genius” outfit which is also a developed social norm that society has created. The ad is trying to

state that all young boys are on the path to become future geniuses by stating “little genius” and

“genius idea”. This social norm is false because not all boys are going to grow up to be geniuses.

Boys may grow up and become non-geniuses as well. This idea that kids are growing up to

become geniuses can also apply to girls as well.

The boy wearing the outfit with blue and red “boys colors” and the girl wearing pink and

purple “girls colors” could be another social norm to take away from this ad. Not all boys wear

these stereotyped colors that society has marked on them and vis versa with girls. This limits the

ad to an audience who prefers these gender biased colors because it doesn’t show the other

options outside of the stereotype colors.

The ad’s audience is limited even more as well. It is limited to parents who want their

kids to succeed in becoming a “social butterfly” and/or a “little genius” and their kids. The ad

does not account for the parents who do not want their kids to become either of these things. It

also does not apply to older kids and older adults looking to shop for themselves. The ad does
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not apply to older adults that don’t have kids either. The ad applies primarily to young kids who

want to be social and smart.

The ad visually shows the kids acting happy based on their smiles and their poses

meaning that the kids looking at these will also be happy if they were to wear the outfits chosen.

This would persuade the audience to buy these outfits because they are convinced it would help

them. It also shows that the kids are unique and trendy and with Gaps chosen outfits, kids who

wear that will also experience these things. The ad shows the two young kids in the ad which

limits the audience to only young kids. The ad shows the girl posing as if she is very passive.

This shows the social norm that women should be passive and shy. The boy in the ad is standing

with a very open, outgoing pose. This shows the social norm that boys are very outgoing,

creative, and fun. This shows that the Gap ad may have a case of passive sexism in its

advertisement. By using these small, almost hidden words of social butterfly and little scholar,

the ad inadvertently created a sexist remark.

A solution to fix the social norm within the ad would be to add more than one kid each

side of the ad. If we were to add a female to the genius side and add a male to the social butterfly

side, this change would drastically change the ad because it would not only offer the audience

more options when choosing the ad, but it would alleviate the problem that the ad faces of being

sexist. There would no longer be a boy who is the little genius but also a girl next to him. There

would be a boy next to the girl wearing a similar outfit who would also be considered a social

butterfly. This would target a broader audience as well because it would offer more outfit options

to choose from.

Another solution to resolve the sexist issue would be to just remove the kids within the

ad. If the kids were removed there would be no reason to assume one gender over the other when
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it comes to the outfit choices. Since both outfits can be described as unisex outfits. A boy could

wear what the girl is wearing in the ad and the girl could wear what the boy is in the ad. The

outfits could be laid out like Gap has done with other ads. This would also expand the audience

because it would be unknown that the outfits were for either boys or girls.

Another alternative way to fix the ad would be to just get rid of the words all together.

The words “scholar” and “social butterfly” are what really make this ad a sexist ad. If we were to

remove these stereotype words, the ad really would fix itself. Since we no longer have a defined

social butterfly outfit and a defined scholar outfit, we wouldn’t really assume that the ad is a

problem. We would only think of the outfits as normal outfits. We could also keep going and add

words that represent both outfits. Instead of defining both individually, we could define both as

unique outfits together. For instance, define them both as just basic “kids clothing”. If we were to

do this, we could remove the individually defined outfits and bind them together.

For such a simple ad with its main goal to only show the possible Gap clothing options,

the ad could be interpreted as representing an idea of passive sexism in ads. The ad shows us that

it only takes a few words to make the ad controversial. It could be seen as an ad that can be

defined as a sexist ad that stereotypes young boys and young girls.

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Works Cited

“Girl and Boy Showing Gap Outfits” 2016. Gap Inc.

https://www.newstatesman.com/sites/default/files/styles/cropped_article_image/public/bl

ogs_2017/07/untitled_design_86_.png?itok=XEY9oZYA