Blacks get indigestion, too

Prime Access Inc. is a New York-based marketing agency specializing in "urban majority advertising," and company president Howard Buford has an interesting piece in the January Gay & Lesbian Review, in which he discusses gay and lesbian advertising and includes some comparison with the evolution of ads featuring African-Americans.

"The use of gay and lesbian images in advertising can be expected to follow the trajectory of African-American representation, which has a much longer history in U.S. advertising. The first marketing efforts traded on broad stereotypes that associated this group with proficiency in food preparation: early examples would be Aunt Jemima's Pancakes, Uncle Ben's Rice, and Cream of Wheat," writes Buford.

"Another association for African-Americans has been with cleaning products, and even today there's a TV spot for Pine-Sol that exploits the worst cliche about the sassy 'colored' woman. Nevertheless, advertising has largely moved beyond these stereotypes to portray African-Americans in virtually the same range of everyday situations as any other group, visiting a theme park or getting indigestion just like everyone else. Even the field of mainstream cosmetics has now embraced African-American images -- highly personal products have always been the most sensitive to any sort of 'denegration' -- something that didn't happen until the late 1990s....

"By the same token, marketers can be expected to become more sophisticated and begin portraying gay and lesbian people as plausible experts in a wider range of topics than just fashion and home decorating. For now, a show like 'Queer Eye For the Straight Guy' is in fact trading on such stereotypes, but it represents the kind of stereotype that has moved other 'emerging markets' into the cultural mainstream. Here an evolution can be observed from a negative stereotype to a positive attribute. Thus a classic stereotype of gay men is that they're overly concerned with their appearance. The flipside of this is an image of gay men as genuinely better groomed and even better looking than the average straight guy -- and possibly even sexier."

The complete piece can be found here.