1950's And The Role Of Women In Modern Advertising

Jean Kilbourne is an advocate for women and is leading a movement to change the way women are viewed in advertising. She opens up the curtains to reveal the hard truth we choose to ignore or even are too obtuse to notice. Women are objectified, materialized, and over-sexualized in order to sell clothes, products, ideas and more. As a woman, I agree with the position Kilbourne presents throughout her documentary Killing Us Softly 4: The Advertising’s Image of Women (2010) and her TEDx Talk The Dangerous Ways Ads See Women (2014.) She demonstrates time and again that these advertisements are dangerous and lead to unrealistic expectations of women.

“keep her where she belongs” or “So, the harder the wife works the cuter she looks!” the truth is that ads like these were very common in the mid-20th century. Many companies used the existing gender roles to appeal to consumers, sex sells and so does gender. The 20th century was the rise of gender advertisement. Since the 20th century was the era of consumerism, it’s natural to think advertisement played a huge role in the popular culture and had a huge influence on how people viewed the world. The belief that women are domestic creatures who always must be obedient to the male figures of their lives was never a new concept in the 20th century. What was new in this era of mass consumption was utilizing gender roles as a marketing technique to make a certain product more desirable for the American Society. During the 20th century, American popular culture, specifically advertising, reinforced the existing gender roles for women as the homemaker, furthermore, creating a constraint on the socially acceptable roles for women which stayed prevalent for many years.

Since the 1960s and the rebirth of the women’s movement, there have been rages against the way women are treated in advertising. Every day viewers will find themselves showered by explicit advertisements, images, slogans, songs, ads, etc., all that which have a major underlying issue within mass media: the objectification of women. Women were suggestively portrayed for the sale of all different types of products and services, from print in magazines to commercials on television. There is an extremely strong focus on women being a sexual object rather than what she is, a female human being.

Avoiding eye contact and cowering with her legs together, Aphrodite’s naked pudica pose in the Venus de' Medici ironically calls attention to the areas that she is trying hide, her breast and genitals (fig. 1). The futile attempts to hide her anatomy would be insignificant if not for the pudica’s contrasting counterpart, the male contrapposto pose, shown in figure 2. The nude male stands in a confident upright posture with his head held high and penis proudly exposed. In ancient Greece a man’s penis was a symbol of his strength, intelligence and authority, whereas pudica, “pudendus,” in Latin, means female genitalia and shame. According to Etienne Walla, an expert of Law, and Elisha Renne, who has a Ph.D. in Anthropology, evidence suggests

Denbeau (2011, p. 55) highlights a study that looked at the progression of exploitation of women in advertising between 1983 and 2003. There was a substantial increase in the sexualization of women throughout this period and they hypothesized that by 2013 this would increase again (Denbeau, 2011, p. 55). Looking at advertisements between 2003 and 2013, one could say that their hypothesis was correct and their study findings are valid that overtime advertising will continue to sexualize women more explicitly.

In conclusion, the three advertisements analyzed give concrete examples to the progression of women in

As time progresses, many companies change the style in which they portray their advertisement. In the two Chanel advertisements, one being from 1937 and the other being from 2007, many comparisons and contrasts can be distinguished. Both ads are similar in their look and target audience, while they also have different styles to them. The vintage ad is a more dark and gloomy ad, while the modern ad is a more light and bright advertisement. The target audience of both advertisements is women who want a perfume to make them feel beautiful, and the purpose of both ads is to persuade consumers of why Chanel is the best perfume to purchase. However, the techniques of both advertisements are very different.

Women all over the world are unhappy with what they look like and are being ridiculed by the people around them for not looking good enough. I decided to conduct a research to find out about the effect advertising has on women and how they feel about their bodies after seeing them. For this I came up with three questions; are women more sexually portrayed in advertising than men? Do these ads change the way women are portrayed in society? By seeing these ads do young girls feel obligated to look like this to be accepted? These questions will help with trying to find out how advertising affects women. I think i will find that advertising is more based around women rather than men and it creates a negative effect on women and how they are viewed

The existence of a predominantly male society and the continuous perpetuation of patriarchy heavily affected the way woman are represented. Women may have been experiencing many privileges nowadays than women in the previous century could not, but there are stereotypes and imposed gender roles that linger, especially in the field of advertising. One of the common types of advertisements that are dominant today are the ones that depict women as a sexualized object to get the attention of the male audience. In the research conducted by Parul Nagi, it is shown that advertisements use women “to draw attention of prospective buyers” (85), and these buyers are mostly, if not all, men. This advertising strategy places the man in the position of the gazer, and the woman as the gazed (Mulvey 837). Advertisements depicting sexualized women rely on human pleasure appealing to the sense of sight. Thus, they tend to become pornographic, wherein “it dehumanizes and objectifies people” (Kilbourne 488), diminishing their worth to that of an object to be owned only for visual and/or sexual pleasure and easily disposed of.

Although, many magazines (such as Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Time, Sports Illustrated) feature women of all ages for the ads, some advertiser prefer to use older women to grab their audience’s attention; rather than using a younger woman; this is because older women are looking for something to keep them looking vibrant, fresh, and glowing like in their younger days. By using these women in replacement of younger women, the advertiser realize they will gain a better audience because older women will see the differences in appearance; and be willing to purchase their product to gain the same results. For instance, just like in the magazine (Cosmo for Latinos) published by (Mulligan, 2015), where they (the advertisers) featured older women in

Some of the observations that have been made based on the various articles studied and also information gathered by us by studying and analyzing various print and television advertisements of different brands. The following findings were inferred from this exercise;

The portrayal of women in advertisements has changed many times over the years. Women often appear as a sexual object in any kind of advertisement or as an attractive material standing nearby a product. Many companies which include the tobacco industry, alcohol companies as well as clothing and electronic and entertainment industries have used women to reach a target demographic which is typically males between the age of 18-34, in order to sell or market a specific brand. Advertisements objectify women by selectively targeting audiences in order to portray a set of debatable images and or styles even for women to aspire to. The use of women in this particular sense is widespread amongst all major forms of media(tv, print, radio,

No one utilizes the power of sexual suggestion like car companies. In today’s world, cars have become a sex symbol, and in the race to sell their brands, the top players in the industry have tried to out-sex each other, at one point or another. Some ads don't even feature a car. Throughout the past 60 years car advertisements have changed significantly. In the 1950s, families were used to show cars were ideal and the way of the future, while the 1980s and 1990s showed biased “fact” based arguments and hints of celebrity approval. Today, the 2000s continue to enlarge celebrity acceptance and continue to make sex appeal more widespread mainly through the portrayal of women. Researcher and professor Tom Reichert, explains that this upward trend

Courtney and Lockeretz (1971) reviewed 312 printed adverts in eight different types of magazines during the 1970s. According to Courtney and Lockeretz (1971) they believed the adverts they reviewed reflected the following stereotypes of women. Women were portrayed as being home-makers, only being dependent on men, sex objects for men and not being able to make important decisions (Wenner and Jackson, 2009). One way adverts have portrayed women is stereotypically, emphasising on the importance of women looking pretty, the traditional roles of being a good housewife and mother. In 1950’s, adverts depicted women always at home and being a good housewife, cleaning, cooking and serving dinner, trying to impress their husbands and enjoying the latest kitchen appliance. The adverts may have promoted these certain topics as in the 1950’s the women were supposed to be a caring mother, homemaker, dutiful wife. Many women did not work as majority of jobs were just advertised for men and the ones who did work were paid substantial less than men.

In the advertisements being studied, the women appear to be the target over the men. The first advertisement features a woman who appears to be elderly based on the color of her hair, but has smooth nearly wrinkle free skin. This advertisement, as one could guess, is for Olay, which is a skin care product. The advertisement shows that the product is for women, and it features this particular woman with near perfect skin. This picture’s purpose is to make other women feel that they should have skin like that. The second advertisement contains a man and woman who are laughing together. This advertisement is for a travel agency. The particular advertisement for this agency is targeted to holiday traveling. The advertisement does not make a difference between the genders because it features both a man and a woman. The third advertisement also features one man and one woman. The background is of a beach. The purpose of this advertisement is for a company who helps the elderly make their plans after retirement. This advertisement does not portray a difference in activities for either gender. The fourth and final advertisement shows a distressed woman who has fallen, which is for the product Life Alert. The advertisement shows a woman alone, implying that she may live on her own as well as implying that woman are more likely to fall than men. In general, it can be said that these advertisements for the elderly are more targeted for