Teenage Girls

Are all teenage girls the same? Are they bad drivers, highly emotional and rash decision makers?  The following Allstate Ad appears to be making this point.



The Allstate commercial above uses comedy and common stereotypes of teenage girls to market their insurance agency. For instance, in place of a teenage girl, there is a man who is referred to as “Mayhem” in her place.  As he is personified as “Becky” the teenage girl, not only does he use his cell phone while driving and speak in common teenage lingo, but “Mayhem” seems to be over emotional about a boy. It is also depicted that “Becky” is not able to drive, which is obviously indicated by her crashing into another woman’s car saying “Oopsies!” and driving away.  This accident doesn’t seem to faze her, which implies that she doesn’t care about the damage she’s caused. This implies that her own emotions and problems override her ability to think, and drive, clearly.

Also, in this commercial, the rhetorical situation is that the increasing amount of teenagers using technology while driving has increased and has caused more accidents. Although this ad just seems to be poking fun at the common stereotypes that teenage girls receive, it also implies that even though teenagers can’t be kept off the road, everyone else can protect themselves from them. When “Becky” hit another car, she was focused of her phone, not the road. Because of this, an innocent woman’s car was destroyed. For this reason, the ad is directed at all adults who are concerned about the driving capabilities of young teenagers. The ad makes it seem as though it is probable that any young girl would be on her phone while driving and that no one would be safe from her behavior. Adults then might infer that teenagers are dangerous drivers and that they should have better insurance on their cars because a teenage will probably hit their car eventually.

This commercial was also aired at a time when texting and driving was a big deal. In fact, whenever a person was doing anything on their phone while driving they were negatively looked at. In Chicago, for instance, it was made a law that no one could talk on the phone legally within legal limits. Also, there was a lot of research going on at this time about the negative effects of texting while driving. Allstate utilized the kairotic situation of this time and used a teenager texting while driving to promote their insurance company.