Masculinity And Femininity: The Objectification Of Woman

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.

In an advert for a female perfume by “Givenchy” a woman is shown who holds the materialistic characteristics. This is not how it really is in society. Not every woman has prominent curves, is slim and tall. This shows how advertisements do not fairly reflect society.

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

The media is constantly spewing out over-sexualised adverts which they shove down our throats. Perfume adverts all have one thing in common. They all have beautiful models in various states of undress. Women are subject to stereotypical views in advertising and are restricted to certain gender roles. These stereotypes are having a negative impact on society. Adverts that portray

Lips, Neck, Breasts – all logical body parts to be shown in advertisements for cologne, right? Sadly, in today’s society, the answer is yes. We are bombarded on a daily basis with thousands of advertisements. They are impossible to avoid and even more impossible to ignore. Whether consciously or unconsciously what we see in these advertisements affects us as a culture. In many of these advertisements women’s bodies are dehumanized. In Jean Kilbourne’s article, “Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt,” she argues, “ads affect us in far more profound and potentially damaging ways. The way that ads portray bodies – especially women’s bodies – as objects conditions us to seeing each other in dehumanizing ways, thus “normalizing” attitudes that can lead

Womanhood is often associated with femininity while manhood with masculinity. Masculinity is the idea that men are tough both physically and mentally. Femininity, a term associated with being women is used to describe a women’s comportment and attitude. A gentle individual male or female, who wears dresses, skirts, high heels, makeup, and has long hair would be identified as feminine. Unfortunately, society judges and criticizes a women who do not depict feminine characteristics. Such women are regarded as either homosexual or queer. I chose two pictures of Grace Jones to compare in this essay since she happens to be a gender bender and victim of alike persecutions. Additionally, Grace Jones is a supermodel and singer from Jamaica, who’s renowned for cross-dressing and artistic fashion styles (Williams). The picture titled, “Grace Jones/Nightclubbing,”was derived from the National Portrait Gallery,while the other from, “Essense” website, Jones demonstrates that women can be feminine or soft in one picture and masculine or hard in the other picture through her appearance.

Objectification of women works with benevolent sexism to further oppress women in the media through its effects on self-esteem and well-being. Rollero’s (2013) article “Men and women facing objectification: The effects of media models on well-being, self-esteem and ambivalent sexism” examines media representations of men and women and how they are related to levels of sexism and psychological well-being. The literature on objectification has mostly indicated the connection between viewing objectified media representations and women’s body displeasure and motivation to achieve a slim body. The goal of the current study was to further past research by studying the effects of objectified media images –considering both male and female models– on psychological well-being, self-regard, and support of sexist states of mind. 166 undergraduates (51.8% males) participated in the study. Results indicated that objectification of men lessened men’s happiness, whereas objectification of women was more damaging because it lessens women’s happiness, appeal and social self-confidence. Furthermore, objectification of women affects men’s validation of sexist attitudes, increasing aggression toward women while decreasing aggression direct to men. Typically, only women are examined in studies of objectification. The inclusion of both male and female effects in the article makes it unique in comparison to other similar studies. Furthermore, the inclusion of both males and females allows for

In 2014 there was an online survey that questioned many women about sexual harassment. In a survey of 811 women, “Over 99 percent of the female respondents said they had experienced some form of street harassment (only three women said they had not). Examples of these gestures would be hip thrusting, hand motions that simulate sex acts, or gestures with mouth or tongue. Over 80% of women have been targets for sexually explicit comments” (Statistics – Stop Street Harassment Studies). Over the last 30 years objectification and sexualization in advertising, media, music videos, video games, and many other platforms. What is sexual objectification? What does sexualizing mean? Sexual objectification is the act of treating a human being as a an

“[Masculinity/ femininity] refers to the extent to which a culture values aggressiveness, competitiveness, looking out for yourself, and dominating others and nature versus gentleness, cooperation, and taking care of others and living in harmony with the natural world.” (Wood) Toula is pressured to marry a nice greek man, while her brother is expected to marry a greek virgin but does not receive the same pressure. Gus also has some expectations of Nick to partake in masculine activities unlike Toula where he is accepting of Toula wanting to take “pottery classes.” Evidence of this is when Nick is trying to show Gus his drawings for the menu and Gus completely disregards his efforts, always responding with, “Where did you get this?” And when Nick says that he drew it, Gus responds with a grunt. “Long term/ short term orientation refers to the extent to which members of a culture think about long term (history and future) vs short term (present).” (Wood) “Individualistic cultures generally rely on low-context communication style, which is direct, explicit, and detailed.” (Wood) “Collectivist cultures typically rely on a high-context communication style, which is indirect and indetailed and which conveys meaning more implicitly than explicitly.” (Wood) Gus is very oriented around the future and therefore follows along with the principles of long term orientation. Even before his children have grown old enough to date, they are already taught that Greek women are to grow up

“Advertising is the art of arresting the human intelligence just long enough to get money from it.” (Shah, 2012) The goal of advertising is to capture their target audience’s attention and to create something memorable to sell their product. One advertisement campaign that has managed to do this quite well is Old Spice a men’s body wash brand that is among the top competitors. Successful advertisement is what creates a brand, even if you have a great product without good advertisement a product cannot be successful. In the advertisement campaign for Old Spice Men’s body wash the advertiser uses sexual appeal geared toward the female demographic, and the use of false cause to play on men’s insecurities of to convince viewers to buy their product.

Although it may be unethical to advertise females as sex objects, the provocative ads are believed to be influential on the customer’s purchasing decision. Whether Suit Supply is genuinely trying to sell their products or just draw attention to their brand, the business is creating advertisements that are considered extremely sensual and inappropriate. Apparently, this “sexual revolution” is the new way to sell fashion; sex sells. The advertisement for the Dutch company, Suit Supply, includes sexual references to make a memorable impression on the customers and influence them to purchase the product. Their goal is to make the customers fantasize about the advertisement, which would hopefully cause them to buy the product. Not only are the

Advertisements are promoting pornography to get people’s attention using female beauty and sexuality to sell their products. Kilbourne talks about how women are been targeted in violent ways through the advertisement of pornography. Pornography is majorly dangerous when it represents the rape and violence shown in mass media, films, and other social media. Brands use images of women to promote their product to get people to buy it by using different sexual themes, poses, and postures. It teaches young men to use women for sex and then discard them when they become unwilling or uninteresting. She used many ads and images to show the violence against women. In the Old Spice deodorant advertisement, a woman can be seen saying “NO’’ but her facial expression implies that she is teasing the men. This ad shows is the reason of why men do not take “no” for an answer and men feel more powerful over women. Kilbourne says, “the deeply held belief that all women, regardless of age, are really temptresses in disguise, nymphet, sexually insatiable and seductive, conveniently transfers all blame and

The amount of skin shown in our culture today has increased dramatically, in our outfits and in our advertisements. We use the human body, both male and female, to sell products ranging from perfume to hamburgers. It has become more acceptable in our culture to see more rather than leave some of the body to the imagination. This is specifically seen in the magazine advertisement for Gucci’s fragrance for men, Guilty. This advertisement targets the male audience, specifically the heterosexual male audience. I will use clearness and sufficiency to argue that the sexual nature of Gucci’s Guilty advertisement effectively targets the male audience because of our culture’s masculinity complex.

Advertising ideologically shapes our perceptions of beauty and strongly influences our ideas, attitudes and values within one’s culture. Advertisers achieve this powerful and direct communication through signifying practices which gives meaning to words and images (Kang, 1997). For example, the exploitation of women is most apparent in TV beer commercials, where the promise of sex and fun is the norm (Hall, Crum, 1994). For example, the Swedish Bikini Team commercial for Old Milwaukee beer. In this commercial, large-breasted blond women wearing bikinis were portrayed as fun companions brought in especially to party with very few men.. Through the exploitation of women in advertisements, this oppression leads to social problems, such the development of eating disorders by young women attempting to achieve the conditioned idea of the “ideal image” (Kang, 1997).