Makeup Advertising

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

Whether we realize it or not, we are constantly surrounded by advertisements. On average, we are exposed to approximately 3,000 ads per day, through logos, billboards, and television commercials, even our choices of brands. But in today’s society, one of the most used and influential tools of advertising are women. But the unfortunate thing is that women are not just viewed as actresses in these ads but as objects for people to look at, use, abuse, and more. In her fourth installment in a line of documentaries, “Killing Us Softly 4,” Jean Kilbourne explains the influence of advertising women and popular culture, and its relationship to gender violence, sexism and racism, and eating disorders.

Sex sells. We’ve all heard this before, so it’s nothing new, but a good advertiser is always aware that sex can also offend – so you have to tread a very fine line. The ad we are deconstructing, a print ad for Covergirl cosmetics, walks that line very well and is setting them up to reap the benefits of another well-planned advertising campaign. Covergirl is a heavyweight in the world of cosmetics that has been used for decades by women and girls alike, and as such they are very skilled at appealing to everyone within that very wide demographic.

Many people would argue that they personally feel exempt from the influences of advertising. But if this is the case, then why is the advertising industry grossing over $250 billion a year? The American living in the United States is typically exposed to over 3,00 advertisements in a single day, which means that he or she will spend two years of their lives watching television commercials. Advertisements are everywhere and we cannot avoid them. We see advertisements in schools, buildings, billboards, airplanes, bust stops, and so on. Not only are advertisements selling advertisements, but they’re selling values and beliefs, sexuality, images, and the normalcy of believing who we should be because an advertisement said so. Advertisements can create environments, but sometimes these environments can become toxic when consumers buy into its toxicity. One of the biggest toxicities of advertisements is the portrayal of women in advertisements. Though standards of beauty vary over time and by cultures, it seems as though the advertising industry is still buying into “the beauty myth.” This is notion that “the quality of beauty objectively and universally exists.” Though there have been strides to break this notion and attack how advertising has objectified women, it seems as though advertisements are objectifying women more and more. In most advertisements, we are not seeing women being depicted as who they really are, but being portrayed and objectified to be someone that they

The Cover Girl ad from March 2011 includes a picture of Queen Latifah in a beige like colored background with her green eye shadow on. Queen Latifah has small brown eyes with very long and luscious black eye lashes. She has a big and beautiful smile with shiny white and straight teeth. Queen Latifah also has a nice pair of small, gold, round dangling earrings in her ears. The word “Cover Girl” is displayed in big and bold green letters across her forehead, all to help improve her the way she looks. Queen Latifah is written in small green letters underneath in the right-hand corner right underneath the word “Cover Girl”. This picture of her is from her head to her shoulders, just enough for the viewers to focus on Cover Girl’s product, which is the makeup. You cannot really tell what type of shirt she is wearing in this photo but the little piece of frill coming off of her shoulder matches pretty well with the whole color scheme of the ad. She also has her hair pulled back into a long pony tail to also help show off their product even more. This advertisement by Cover Girl effectively uses logos, ethos, and pathos to convince the viewers to buy Cover Girl products.

Advertising is everywhere, it’s online, billboards, magazines, and the most popular television. Different advertising are mostly targeting towards a certain gender, age, or interests. Covergirl advertising is mostly targeted at women, and is also seen in every place you can think of. You most likely could go up to any girl and ask her-what is the Covergirl slogan? Easy, Breezy, Beautiful, Covergirl. Covergirl has done a great job at advertising there make-up products. Covergirl has branched out to every type of advertising there is. They have commercials, bill boards, online ads, there in many magazines, and they are also being promoted on the poplar show America’s Next Top

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.

In addition, Covergirl also uses pathos. We know they target women because it is makeup. The products they advertise are for every woman and age in the audience. It makes sense, the older celebrities are to get older women and younger celebrities get younger women. In majority of the ads out there the companies try to diversify their product to get more sales. For example, Covergirl uses Ellen DeGeneres, Rihanna, Sofia Vergara, Queen Latifah, and Drew Barrymore to appeal different consumers. The diversity helps bring a lot more money in, rather it focusing on one set group. It helps a lot because many women have some insecurities and don’t really feel proud of their appearance. Their products also help with self-esteem. Many adolescents and adults only feel cute when they are using the products like mascara. Women may suffer from peer pressure. Their friends may threaten to stop hanging out with them because they aren’t wearing makeup. Covergirl can help with that to make women feel loved and welcomed with the people around them, but most importantly with themselves. It makes sense, the older celebrities are to get older women and younger celebrities get

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.

Advertisements we see it all the time, some of them we ignore and some it gets our attention. Advertisements have many different pictures from food, people, clothing, cars and they are located everywhere in order to sell their product. But what if I told you that they have hidden messages projected throw them in many ways, and that we do not see it right of way. When it comes to advertisement in magazine and commercials, men are often portray as strong and big showing the image of power, but in the other hand women for a very long time have been portray in different ways as weak or a toy for sexual advertisement. In addition Kilbourne mention in her video “Killing us softy 4” they advertise images that show violence, sexuality and health issues.

In the ad there is the custom of bright colors that is used in a soft way lot to get some kind of interaction and effect with the audience and the product itself because it “confirms that purchasing intent is greatly affected by colors due to the impact they have on how a brand is perceived”(Ciotti) meaning “colors influence how consumers view the "personality" of the brand.” (Ciotti) And from the looks of the personality of the brand it was known that Cover Girl has been out for a long time and knows what makes it a popular makeup brand that has made color affects a big part of their brand they used in their advertisements and

Even though these images are photo shopped people believe they can look that way by purchasing the product. However, it is merely a propaganda technique companies and business use to draw in business. Nevertheless, it doe not fail to draw in revenue. Cosmetic companies such as Cover Girl show models using their product, allowing teens to thing if they can use the products the models are using they can look like the model in the advertisement.

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.

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.

It’s the overuse of Photoshop in beauty ads that also plays a large part in our changed view of womanhood. We are shown how the woman on the cover and are expected to believe this is how she naturally looks, but with a bit of makeup. Heavily edited