It’s easy to dismiss advertising. The brief bits of filler between the stuff we’d rather consume can seem insignificant, particularly in terms of its power to influence attitudes about gender roles and norms. However, numerous psychological studies on observational learning – also known as social learning – tell us that the media we seemingly passively consume is also teaching us ideas about how to behave, think and be. We humans learn by watching models: parents, teachers and others who are influential to us. We can merely watch someone else, even via a screen, and take cues on our behaviour from…