2.01 Citing textual evidence Advertising is used in the public to get the word out that a new product is here. Advertising informs people that this product may be something that they like and is useful to them. Without advertising, many companies would not be able to preserve their business. Companies have to make sure they efficiently inform the public what their product does because if the public has no understanding of the product, they most likely will not buy it. Advertisements are first used locally and can eventually become nationally if the business is doing well and properly informing the consumers about the product and its purpose. This can be done using social media, newspapers, magazines, or bill boards if they are wealthy enough.
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.
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
Within this essay I plan to discuss the portrayal of women in contemporary advertising and focus around the ideologies of the male gaze according to Laura Mulvey. Laura Mulvey is a feminist film theorist commonly known for her controversial essay, “visual pleasure and narrative cinema” written in 1973. This piece went on to be published in the influential British film journey screen. (Hein,2008) Her written views have achieved to shift the perception of film theories conventional structure known as psychoanalytic, which were written about by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan.
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.
Advertising via commercials allows businesses to not only show consumers their product, but also tell them about it too. The way companies utilize
The purpose of advertisements and commercials is to attract possible buyers into thinking the product is a necessity, rather than a luxury. In order to pursue this goal, the ad must somehow connect with the possible buyer. According to Jib Fowles from “Advertising: 15 Basic Appeals”
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.
Sexism within Advertisements As a whole, this society has greatly improved, with new cures to old diseases, more efficient ways to complete daily tasks, and new technology with information at our fingertips. Along with these newfound practices, humanity has also given rise to a new era of social justice. Humans everywhere are working everyday to ensure everyone is treated with equality and respect. Nevertheless, humanity still has a long way to go. The mission will not be complete until there is not a single example of mistreatment. However, many of these mistreatments have been normalized so the task of completely eradicating them will be even more difficult. An example of these mistreatments is sexism in advertising. Sexism is obviously
Women are commonly objectified by advertisements and magazines to sell various products . Some advertisers objectify women by using their bodies in place of the product they are trying to sell and often showing only a woman’s body and not showing the her face; this is called “body-ism” and occurs frequently in a variety of adverts . Some advertisers have published images that reflect acts of violence and sexual assault against women and suggesting that these acts are acceptable .
Advertisements are made to grasp a consumer’s attention to the item the creators are selling, and sometimes the decide to objectify an entire audience in hopes of receiving attention from the male population. Studies have shown that as time passes, women become less affected and offended by the oversexualization of women in advertisements. Therefore, women have become desensitized to their objectification, to the point they now view it as normal. During the initial period of the hypersexualization of women, advertisements about women in traditional roles such as housewife or being in the kitchen, receded. In 1991 a new wave of feminism appeared, where women are trying to reclaim their bodies by embracing sexuality, while it is a good concept,
Furthermore, Gender as a representative kind of culture stereotypes, it strongly influences people’s perspective of others, especially when lots information has been limited, for example, in the advertisement, the audience only have a few minutes to engage with it and it normally has no time to explain the issue of gender itself. In other words, when people meet new friends at the first time, they always make a precision of that person based on their characteristics, especially visual features. For instance, if a man seems full of muscle and powerful, then he will be defined as masculinity. Therefore, advertising often is critiqued as controversial of gender because it mainly expresses ideas and values visually, and gender is the most popular
Caitlin Scurria Professor B. Hammer PIT journal/Transfer Portfolio 21 July 2015 Gender Portrayals in Advertising Gender portrayal in advertising has been a widely discussed and researched topic for years by social scientists, consumers, and advertisers alike. However, many people have looked at the topic solely from the perspective of male and female consumers and the effect that gendered advertisements has on them. In an article from The Journal of Advertising, Linda Tuncay Zayer and Catherine A. Coleman researched this topic from a different angle. The article, Advertising Professionals’ Perceptions of the Impact of Gender Portrayals on Men and Women: A Question of Ethics, analyzes the issue from the advertiser’s perceptions of what they are putting out in the media. Zayer and Coleman had two central research questions: “What are advertising professionals’ perceptions of how gender portrayals impact male and female audiences? In what ways do ethics inform their creative and strategic choices regarding gender portrayals in advertising?” (Zayer and Coleman 2015). Research was completed with two rounds of data collection on a wide variety of informants with different levels of experience in the industry (Zayer and Coleman 2015). Research methods included semi-structured and unstructured interviews, a focus group, and field operations (Zayer and Coleman 2015). After research was completed, the informants were placed in four different categories based off three interrelated
Strauss talked about one commercial in particular, Dove Real Women. Where a household brand name soap went from making model like females need to use their products to feel beautiful. All the way to what they call “real” women who need their product to feel beautiful. With the way women have been dominating the market of consuming, advertisers needed to change their approach so that now anyone at any shape can feel beautiful, as long as they use their product. Ultimately proving that advertisers are just like an overeager cult follower, willing to do whatever is necessary to win the approval and survival of the leader. Although, in this case it would be the corporation which doesn’t seem all that different
Consumers have wants and needs, and the most popular way to get those products known to consumers is advertising. Advertising provides the consumers with important information about the products and or services. Plus, how would the consumers know about things if they were not advertised in a particular way. Advertisements educate the consumers about the positive and negative effect of a product. For example, a medical, commercial may across your television or you may even see an ad about it in a magazine, throughout that ad the marketer will explain to you the good that