Gender Roles of Identical Twins
Representation in Advertising
Intro
In 2019, it was revealed by the CDC that every year in the US, 3,745,540 children are born. That means roughly every hour 500 kids are born. Of those kids, sources say 3 in 100 come out as twins. Fraternal twins meaning that two different eggs are fertilized by two different sperms. This is different from when identical twins, who are an fertilized egg that divides in half and keeps growing. Identical twins are roughly about 3-5 out of every 1000 births. Scientist say that the rise of multiple births might be from fertility drugs, but that's another story for a different time.
The point of this assignment is to look at how society views gender roles of identical twins. From looking at various advertisements including identical twins, this was shown... Female twins are generally always seen as having the same style and same interests making them an exact copy. How they’re seen can be quite opposite though. If they are outgoing then they are seen as more fun and sexy, while if they are more reserved than they are seen as creepy. While male twins are identical in look of course, but they’re often shown as being the exact opposite. Having a dark and evil twin. These are all dominant though because they show twins as a set. The true oppositional is having them be their own persons.
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Conclusion
In conclusion, the dominant representations of identical twins are thinking they are mirrors of people. That they are a duplicate of someone with the same or opposite personalities. This makes twins seem that they aren’t their own individual persons. That they are only a twin and are incomplete without the other person, which isn’t true.
It was a lot easier to find female twins in advertisements than it was for male. There’s more ways and reasons to show female twins in marketing. Most ads if not all were dominant or showed dominant traits, and it was difficult finding big advertisements that showed oppositional representation of twins. This was probably because they only used twins for an idea of something being identical rather than thinking about the demographic.
For the future, media should casually include twins as if they would include anyone else. They might look the same, but they shouldn't be the exact same.
References
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Ager, Rob. “Mirrors and Symmetry .” MAZES, MIRRORS, DECEPTION AND DENIAL, 2008, www.collativelearning.com/the%20shining%20-%20chap%2020.html.
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Clark, Christian. “The Infamous ‘and Twins’ Coors Light Commercial Turns 15.” The Seattle Times, The Seattle Times Company, 3 Nov. 2017, www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/the-infamous-and-twins-coors-light-commercial-turns-15/.
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Cohen-Eliya, M., & Hammer, Y. (2004). Advertisements, stereotypes, and freedom of expression. Journal of Social Philosophy, 35(2).
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Hamilton, Brady, et al. “Births: Provisional Data for 2019.” CDC, May 2020, www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr-8-508.pdf.
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Karisa Ding|Medically reviewed byAnthony Propst, M.D. “Your Likelihood of Having Twins or More.” BabyCenter, www.babycenter.com/pregnancy/your-baby/your-likelihood-of-having-twins-or-more_3575.