Sexist Ads for the Seattle Times

By kate on November 6th, 2014

I’m a Seattle Times subscriber, because I like to read a local newspaper and it’s the only one left. They have their weaknesses and I don’t always agree with their editorial positions, but they still do strong investigative journalism. Recently, I started to notice a series of ads running in the Times advertising the Sunday edition of the paper. Each ad featured a “person” (I’m guessing they’re fictional) sharing their Sunday experience and how the Seattle Times is a central part of it. That’s a nice concept, but the execution started to annoy me as I realized each character was very stereotypical.

Wishing I would see some against-the-grain characters in this series of ads, I created my own. Below I’ve included five real ads from the Times so you can see for yourself how sexist they are.

: In which we learn that women only read the entertainment section, cook and shop, and find crossword puzzles too frustrating

: In which we learn that women cook and prefer the magazine section, while men only read the sports section and occasionally think about cooking manly stuff like BBQ