Analysis Of The Article 'Sex Sells' Out Of Focus

In the documentary Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising’s Image of Women by Jean Kilbourne, she talks about how women are depicted in advertisement. The average American will spend 2 years of their life just watching advertisement, and most of these people will make the claim that the ads were not effective to them. Jean Kilbourne stresses that the advertisement companies make their ads quick and cumulative so that they almost seem forgettable. However, the advertisements will still resonate in your mind unconsciously. Kilbourne argues that the objectification of women in the advertisement industry: negatively affects the mental health of women with the societal need to be perfect, encourages the eroticism of violence, and tells women they need

The use of sexualization also reinforces a pattern of gender roles that are currently circulating throughout advertisements. More often than not, women who are used as ploys in ads are seen doing household chores like vacuuming, changing the toilet paper, or making coffee. Females are rarely ever seen in a work place, and definitely not in a powerful position. In fact, the directors of most of these ads place women below or behind the man to show who has the power in actuality. Women are seen as skinny, fragile, and immobile in high heels, while men are strong and powerful. By setting up such a strong binary between the two different groups, it is obvious that the majority of the American society will not be able to fit into these roles, and it leaves a sense of rejection for the average person. This rejection, accepted by the viewers, manifests

Gender role bias in advertisements has been so prevalent for so long that the untrained eye wouldn't even discern it. All the same, these biases, for the most part, put women in subordinate positions and men in dominant ones. This assumption on both the genders is unfair and demeaning. These ads portray women as subservient and play toys for men. Not only do the models depict an image nowhere near close to reality, but their bodies are scantily clad and what few clothes they are wearing are very revealing.

We've all seen and read many advertisements and we usually find them appealing and very persuasive. However the question is, what are they really advertising? Women are usually used for many different advertisements, not only are they used for women's clothing but also for other materials and objects. These are the ads that we look at each and every day. In, “Killing Us Softly” by Jean Kilbourne, she introduces her problem with how women are being used to advertise products. She shows us ads that she has seen where women are being used to advertise a company’s product. While our women are being used, dehumanized, and sexualized in our society, we’re going on with our life like it’s normal.

In society, women are held to a very high social standard. The pressure to look as perfect as all the models in magazines have driven many girls to an impossible fixation. Not only is it seen as a social norm, but also people do not even realize the degrading images of women in our everyday surroundings. After watching “Killing Us Softly”, this ideal was brought to my attention more that almost every advertisement piece that involves women promotes sexualization, objectification, and reinforces the feminine gender roles in America.

This video is entitled “The Next Time Someone Says Sexism Isn't Real, Show Them These Shocking Role-Reversal Images” by Darcie Conway. I chose this article because it talks about sexism and I know for sure that sexism is happening everywhere. It is due to media and technology, like television, magazines, advertisement and etc. Furthermore, this video tells us about how men and women view the body of a woman. According to Conway, one study found that more than 50% of ads portrayed women in women’s magazines as an object”.

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.

Do you remember the last ad you saw in the past 24 hours? Do you remember what they were selling? It was definitely not the item that was mentioned at the bottom of the ad. For years, marketing has been using people 's temptations to make them interested in the ad, or commercial; not necessarily in the product. In Judith Lorber’s piece, “Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt”: Advertising and Violence, it becomes evident how many different ways a woman can be negatively affected by the media’s idea of how a sexy woman is supposed to look and be treated. Lorber’s research explains how women are negatively affected in the workforce and within their daily lives due to the constant objectification of women in ads and commercials. Women are forced to

Advertisements set the standard of beauty because an audience perceives what is being distributed as an “ideal woman.” If she was not the “ideal woman” then why is she on the cover of all the magazines? In Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences, David R. Croteau and William D. Hoynes write, “The most visible ad is the cover of the magazine. The standard image of the ideal woman on the cover suggests that purchase of the magazine will provide clues to how and what to buy in order to become the ideal woman.” This woman on this magazine, they claim, is simply being used as a form of covert advertising to sell products (182). The mindset is that if a woman purchases all of the products as the one on the cover then she will then be the “ideal” woman and will be in a comfortable position in that aspect of her life. She will not have to worry further of beauty. However, that is unrealistic as humans cannot reach perfection and even if they were exactly similar to the ideal woman the media would simply move on to the next interpretation of

This isn’t the only ad in which women are objectified or their body made to be seen as an object separate from its context. Again, I turn to the book Women’s Voices Feminist Visions which state “There is a broad institutional support for the objectification of multifaceted femininities in our

It is also noticeable, that in a lot of ads women appear dominant and aggressive. They make the first move and men apparently play victims, or a "sex object", as Kilbourne noticed. Advertisements for the body spray for men, Tag, say, "WARNING, the makers of Tag Body Spray will not be held liable should your attraction to your Tag – wearing boyfriend cause you to engage in behavior that grandma may consider ‘unladylike'"; the picture is as impressive as the warning. The first thought that popped in my mind was "would only the grandma consider such behavior unladylike?" I do not think so. The second one was about the actual capability of a man to attract a woman. The real picture occurs if we reverse the subject and the object. Imagine a man on top of a woman, as it is shown in the ad, the result will be terrifying – it would look like a rape. Kilbourne says, "Although these ads are often funny, it is never a good thing for human to be objectified. However, there is a world difference between the objectification of men and that of women. The most important difference is that there is no danger for most men, whereas objectified women are always at risk," pointing out a very interesting fact: nobody would take seriously an ad where a woman abuses a man., but if reversed, it would be very realistic and true (464). Men are never concerned about daily protection,

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

Women are targeted in advertisements to create a standard of beauty and behaviors that they will never reach. The way they are invented on television, in shows and movies, paints them as a species with very little variety, no depth, and inaccurate portrayals of their current existence in society.

Many commercials represent the female figure as an unemployed character doing the traditional tasks in the household rather than being in the office, or as a sexual object that through seduction would be likely to obtain what it wants. In contrast,

In terms of women and sex appeal, the world of advertising has changed a considerable amount. Many of the advertisements which are seen in newspapers, magazines, and television fail to portray women in a more positive light. The image of females in numerous advertisements are merely viewed as fascinating "objects" while they are also being displayed in a fashion that is supposed to appeal only to men, i.e. exploitation of the body. Though these types of advertisements are very effective at selling their products to consumers, it seems as if the minds ' of women, especially younger women/teenage girls are being corrupted as they are pressured to live up to the ideal image: sexy and thin with a little extra curves.