Rezkallah expresses himself by subverting the traditional roles of husband and wife in his parallel vision of Van Heusen’s tie advertisement from the 1950s. Both artists aim to challenge gender roles in their own respective manner. Rezkallah reverses gender roles to show female domesticity and to reveal modern hypocrisy by displaying the absurdity of sexism that persists in modern-day society while Duffy reminisces over the marginalised voices in a non-confrontational manner.
Through the subversive and satirical representation of men in this vintage-inspired text, Rezkallah subverts the predatory masculinity of men with the domesticated nature of women to emphasise the incongruity of present gender expectations. The inversion of gender roles from the original Van Heusen ties advertisement in a satirical manner informs the audience to approach the text in a more casual manner. The husband is seen to be serving the wife breakfast, an uncommon representation of relationship dynamics. Reversing the role of the husband into becoming the submissive and gentle housewife is bizarre to viewers due to the opposition towards normalised traditional binary gender roles. Rezkallah’s work illustrates that while the world may be moving towards a more open viewpoint on gender roles, society subconsciously places
