Author: Gibson Ncube, Senior Lecturer, Stellenbosch University

Around the world, fast food advertising has been called out for sexualising and objectifying women’s bodies. In South Africa in 2019, for example, one fast food chain was castigated by advertising authorities for “the gratuitous use of sexualised women and sexual puns, with no product relevance”. At the same time, UK authorities put regulations in place to prohibit ads featuring gender stereotypes that could cause harm or lead to significant or widespread offence. Meat is masculine: how food advertising perpetuates harmful gender stereotypes Zimbabwe is no exception. This is particularly the case with the marketing strategy of popular chain Mambo’s…