Advertising : Objectification And Objectification Of Women In Advertising

Jean Kilbourne’s film, Killing Us Softly 4, depicts the way the females are shown in advertisements. She discusses how advertisement sell concepts of normalcy and what it means to be a “male” and a “female.” One of her main arguments focuses on how women aspire to achieve the physical perfection that is portrayed in advertisements but this perfection is actually artificially created through Photoshop and other editing tools. Women in advertisements are often objectified as weak, skinny, and beautiful while men are often portrayed as bigger and stronger. Advertisements utilize the setting, the position of the people in the advertisements, and the products to appeal to the unconscious aspect

Sexist ads show that society is dominated by the same masculine values that have controlled the image of women in the media for years. Sexist advertisement reinforces gender stereotypes and roles, or uses sex appeal to sell products, which degrades the overall public perception of women. The idea that sexism is such a rampant problem comes from the stereotypes that are so deeply embedded into today’s society that they almost seem to be socially acceptable, although they are nowhere near politically correct. Images that objectify women seem to be almost a staple in media and advertising: attractive women are plastered all over ads. The images perpetuate an image of the modern woman, a gender stereotype that is reinforced time and time again by the media. These images are accepted as “okay” in advertising, to depict a particular product as sexy or attractive. And if the product is sexy, so shall be the consumer. In the 1970s, groups of women initially took issue with the objectification of women in advertisements and with the limited roles in which these ads showed women. If they weren’t pin-ups, they were delicate

There are countless advertisements in the media, weather videos, newspapers, magazines articles, or even billboards that have the face or the body of a women display as the main background of the advertisements. Hardees advertises their food by showing an oversexualized woman eating a burger or sandwich. This is just one of many examples of the way advertisements, ads for short, oversexualize woman in the media.

Today’s world is dominated by the great influence of advertising media, which often depicts the objectification of women. The film Killing Us Softly 3, discusses how influential the negative portrayal and misrepresentation of women is throughout advertising media. The Versace advertisement I have chosen to analyze displays a slim, scantily clothed woman of color guarded by a shirtless, muscular man. Based on concepts from the film and the course’s text, it is clear that this advertisement sets a particular feminine beauty standard and, nonetheless, illustrates women as solely being sexual objects of men, having little to no power. This fashion ad influences the way women view their physical appearance, along with their position and function in society.

Sexualizaton and objectification in the advertisements we see and the media we watch has become a very strong issue in our society. With the idea that “sex sells”, consumers don’t even realize that they’re not viewing the advertisements for what they are, but for the women (or men) that are being portrayed in a very erotic way, posed with whatever product they were hired to sell. Many articles have been written so far to challenge and assess this problem, but one written by Jean Kilbourne (1999), “”Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt”: Advertising and Violence” holds an extensive amount of authority. Using her personal experience with the subject, as well as studies she has conducted herself on the topic of sexualization, she talks about how the amount of sexualization in advertising affects how society views the culture and products consumers buy. She also notes that because of the quantity and prevalence of these ads, the rate of all forms of sexual assault, specifically rape (mostly towards women of all age), increase, as well as other forms of assault. It is important to examine Kilbourne’s use of rhetorical devices, such as ethos, pathos, and logos, and how effective these devices make her article. This way, it can be examined for its validity and her understanding of her own research. Kilbourne’s article is very effective through her uses of pathos and ethos, but at the same time, it loses its effectiveness through her absence of a counter-argument, as well as a lack

In 2016, the United States spent 190 billion U.S. dollars on advertisements, almost double the amount of money on advertising than the next largest ad market (Statista). These ads advertise a multitude of different products. The ads are exposed to society in many different ways, from the breaks in between songs on the radio, to the ads shown online. Ads are targeted to a specific group of people, usually, the target demographic the brand wants to buy their product. Brands will often use women’s bodies in a sexual way to get people to stop and look at their ads. Over the last few decades, speakers and activists have seen advertisements becoming more sexual and more demeaning towards women. Activist Jean Kilbourne has been analyzing ads and has been bringing awareness to this issue for years through her four documentaries. In her documentary, “Killing Us Softly 4,” Jean Kilbourne asserts women’s bodies are often dismembered, portrayed with an unattainable, “ideal” body type, and despite advances in the women’s movement, the objectification of women in ads have gotten worse. The two images below illustrate these ideas.

Hi everyone, thank you all for coming to this event. Today I’m here because I have an important message for you all. Did you ever watch an advertisement on the Internet or on TV? The answer will be yes. Now, did you ever try to copy the idea of the advertisements to look like the celebrities or as cool as the people presented in this ad? I will let you think about that question because we have all tried to buy something or to change something to look like those faked models in advertisements. Not only that, but ads started telling us how to think, how to act and even how to live our private life and that is really dangerous for our society and our future. For example, it’s been a while that we are fighting for the equality between men and women,

Objectification of women is on the rise in society today. The underlying message is that women are living in a sexually gratified atmosphere. From advertisements to television and magazines etc. Woman are exploited as sexual objects while men believe depicting images of women in a sexual manner is funny or sexy but why not offensive or degrading? Therefore, advertisements influence the core of the sexualization of culture.

Throughout Jean Kilbourne’s film, Killing Us Softly 4, she states that advertisement is frequently used to communicate with potential consumers and persuade them to buy certain products. While advertising’s main purpose is to sell products, modern advertising does more than just sell a company’s merchandise. Advertisers create the values, images, and concepts of love and sexuality that every member of society is pressured to meet; they tell consumers who they are and who they should be. Modern advertising tends to portray the two genders, male and female, in completely different ways. Men are described as powerful beings who are believed to be insensitive and brutal; they are posed and photographed in positions that create a perception of strength and dignity. On the contrary, women are viewed as the weaker sex and taught to believe that their outward appearance determines their value in society. In a Cosmopolitan magazine, a Miss Dior perfume advertisement uses a beautiful naked woman, with long, brown hair and brown eyes, barely covered by a blanket to sell their product. While the perfume being sold should be the focus of the ad, the woman occupies most of the image lying on a bed in a provocative position. She appears to be around twenty-two years old, which appeals to the belief that sexuality only belongs to the young and attractive. In today’s society, women are viewed as vulnerable, objects used to please men, and flawless.

Objectification theory, first proposed by Barbara Frederickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts in 1997, provided other psychologist with the framework for understanding experience women have through the context of sociocultural aspects that sexually objectifies the female body (Szymanski, Moffitt, & Carr, 2011, p. 6). Many references to the female body equate a woman’s worth with how well she fits within the socially ideal body type and how she functions sexually. Frederickson and Roberts (1997) presented the notion that women were sexually objectified and were seen as only valuable if they have a use to others. They also proposed that women’s body parts were seen as separate from their entire selves and viewed as the point of male desire. The objectification

An adequate range of research has been conducted to approach the constructed gender in television advertisements in Europe, America and India. One of the pioneering activist and cultural theorist who wrote books, films about this topic, as an instance the film Killing Us Softly, and was invited as a speaker in Tedx (an organization that invite influential and successful speaker to give a talk/lecture on their effective ideas) to talk about the constructed identity of the American woman in advertisements is Jean Kilbourne. Jean Kilbourne disputes:

Christine Swanton et al., in “Treating Women as Sex Objects”, illustrates what it means to sexually objectify women and holds that sexual objectification is wrong because it extends from the individual to an entire class of people through the usage of a real of fictive image of an individual. (Swanton, p. 11-12). Timo Jütten, in “Sexual Objectification”, defines sexual objectification different from Swanton, but nonetheless, holds that it is always wrong in all circumstances because it violates the autonomy and equal social standing of women and that it does not require actual use of a woman (Jütten, p. 29). On the other hand, Patricia Marino, in “The Ethics of Sexual Objectification: Autonomy and Consent”, shows support for Nussbaum’s theory and holds that sexual objectification need not always be wrong, as it can be consented to between adults, given the right social and political context and that weak instrumental use of a person is benign

Everyday we expose ourselves to thousands of advertisements in a wide variety of environments where ever we go; yet, we fail to realize the influence of the implications being sold to us on these advertisements, particularly about women. Advertisements don’t just sell products; they sell this notion that women are less of humans and more of objects, particularly in the sexual sense. It is important to understand that the advertising worlds’ constant sexual objectification of women has led to a change in sexual pathology in our society, by creating a culture that strives to be the unobtainable image of beauty we see on the cover of magazines. Even more specifically it is important to study the multiple influences that advertisements have

Objectification is defined as any presentation emphasizing sexually suggestive body parts. These body parts do not include the head; they mainly focus on the breasts, lips, or groin area. This is a common tactic used in advertisements to grab peoples’ attention. Women are primarily the ones objectified and highlighted as sexual objects. According to Sheehan in Controversies in Contemporary Advertising (2014), “The process of objectification has been described as demeaning and dehumanizing” (p.107).

The objectification of women is a huge issue in society and is often led by advertising. However many men still believe that the adverts depicting women in a sexual and often passive posture are not very offensive but rather very funny or sexy. However how would they feel if it were their daughter or sister being advertised throughout the world as a sex object?