A Target MissRepresentation

I saw this Target advertisement on the side of one of their stores in West Sacramento the other day. At first I was just surprised to see that the the male figure in the ad wasn't red throughout the entire board. It seems that in anyone of Target's clothing advertisements the model is always wearing a majority of red or white and everything around them is the same in that regard. So it hit me as a little strange to see that in this advertisement the male model was fading out on the right side as more of an orange/yellow color instead of staying consistently red like the four other shots of himself. Even after thinking about it for sometime while I was walking around I could not figure out Target's purpose for changing his color. Maybe I'm over-thinking it but it just seems weird to me to see a Target ad that isn't wholly red and white. At first I thought that maybe they did it so that the Target symbol would be more noticeable but then that just seems lazy because why not just move it over above the words "Energy spent wisely?" That was my best guess for why the advertising team might have decided to do that and even then it just seems like such a bad excuse.

Besides this I also realized that for most, if not all, of Target ads that I have seen that are trying to get people to buy their sports gear the models in the advertisements will be men and almost never women. Even when the ad is just referencing a sport it's not a woman that is being portrayed as strong or athletic or whatever they're trying to get across, but a man. I was surprised to see how much I started to notice this advertising strategy (or maybe stereotype) after recently watching and discussing the Miss Representation documentary. It seems that many of the points that they brought up during their documentary are very true, even today, and I could find a better example than Target, probably one of the most popular stores is still focusing on the "fact" that men are to be portrayed as competitive and sporty while many of the advertisements involving women has them in the house or outside doing house/yard work. They too are wearing Target clothes or using their products but still in the stereotypical way that woman are the house keepers while men are more active in the world. I feel that if someone doesn't notice these differences in Target's advertising then they won't be effected all that much but every since I've noticed it it just seems that it takes a little away from Target's overall ad.