Ellisism

Most common words in advertising to boys (and probably most used in advertising agencies).

Most common words used in advertising to girls (and probably in new business pitches).

Thanks to the team at ‘The Achilles Effect‘ for posting these great infographics that compare the most common words used in advertising to boys and girls.

This is not an endorsement of The Achilles Effect or its beliefs. I’ve checked out the site and it seems like it might offer some advice for concerned parents.

The Achilles Effect explores gender bias in the entertainment aimed at primary school boys, focusing on the dominant themes in children’s TV shows, toy advertising, movies, and books: gender stereotypes of both sexes, male dominance, negative portrayals of fathers, breaking of the mother/son bond, and the devaluing of femininity. It examines the gender messages sent by pop culture, provides strategies for countering these messages, and encourages discussion of a vitally important issue that is rarely talked about—boys and their often skewed understanding of gender.

The Achilles Effect is a guide for parents, educators, and students who want to learn more about male and female stereotypes, their continued strong presence in kids’ pop culture, and their effect on young boys.

Avatar or shill? Does it make a difference to the writer?

I was struggling with this one and needed a sound definition of “Avatar” to compare to the more common shill, spokesperson, talking head and host. So I turned to On Language and found this:

Derived from the Sanskrit avatra, meaning ”descent,” avatar first appeared in English in 1784 to mean an incarnation or human appearance of a deity, particularly Vishnu. Hindu mythology avers that 10 incarnations of the peace-loving divinity will appear on Earth, each an avatar, or ”descent,” of the god himself. (That Vishnu has four arms is not in dispute. As to the qualities of his bosom, however, the Vedas are mute.) From that celestial origin, the term’s meaning expanded beyond the strictly religious, coming to mean something akin to ”an embodiment, or object of worship,” as in David Masson’s 1859 derogation of John Donne (a poet whose claim to the metaphysical was of a wholly different stripe) in his book ”The Life of John Milton.” ”Glad that the avatar of Donne, as an intermediate power between Spenser and Milton, was so brief and partial,” he wrote. Though Masson has assuredly done Donne wrong, it is video games to which today’s brief attention spans are partial.

The proliferation of avatar’s second meaning can be traced to Second Life, a multiplayer online virtual world, where players fashion their own online personae called avatars. The popularity of the game has shot the term into the mainstream. Philip Rosedale, the creator of Second Life, defines avatar in the gaming sense as ”the representation of your chosen embodied appearance to other people in a virtual world.” Considering that Second Life avatars may assume literally any guise — wings, a dragon’s head, gills and flippers — the key to avatarness, in Rosedale’s view, is user control. And insofar as a Second Life avatar does and is precisely what the player wants, not just a little Mario who can be made to run and jump or a shapely diva gyrating of her own programmed will, it comes far closer to being a full-fledged virtual persona.

What a relief. It turns out that all those talking heads on websites are just real people and we can stick to basics when we put words in their mouths. They aren’t avatars at all.