Patriarchy In Jean Kilbourne's Advertisement

To answer this fully first we would need to understand what these effects are within the video while applying the given perspective of the male gaze discussed earlier. The ad opens up to Charlotte McKinney seemingly naked being viewed upon multiple blue collar male workers. As walking past a man watering vegetables she states that she likes things all natural, with the water placement she walks past seemingly covered but the males gaze states it all, that she is undressed and it is blatantly staring. Visually the colors used in the ad are bright and vibrant set to the backdrop of a farmers market, seemingly making the ad seem happy and vibrant almost like a day dream of the typical male. The most prominent features of the ad are the well placed fruit and objects throughout the ad. The fruits used consist of tomatoes, melons, etc. and objects such as a hose, ice bar, and fruit scale. There is even a depiction of grabbing at her by the squeezing of the tomato which is covering her rear. Bringing forth the aspect that culturally it is okay to grab at someone. Now while the video does have other females in the video they are placed in passing as to not distract from McKinney. If looking at the end of the video you can see each man that is shown plus more are seen staring at her while she is eating the Carl’s Jr All-Natural burger. This ad shows itself as a perfect example of the male

Do you ever watch the Super Bowl for its commercials? Have you ever bought a more expensive product because you had seen its advertisement? If the answer is yes, then you might have been a victim of today’s marketers. Jean Kilbourne, the author of “Killing us Softly” stated in one of her lectures, “The influence of advertising is quick, cumulative and for the most part, subconscious, ads sell more products.” “Advertising has become much more widespread, powerful, and sophisticated.” According to Jean Kilbourne, “babies at six months can recognize corporate logos, and that is the age at which marketers are now starting to target our children.” Jean Kilbourne is a woman who grew up in the 1950s and worked in the media field in the 1960s. This paper will explain the methods used by marketers in today’s advertising. An advertisement contains one or more elements of aesthetics, humor, and sexual nature.

For the longest time now, advertising has played a huge role in how we identify ourselves in the United States with the American culture, and how others identify themselves with all the cultures of the rest of the world as well. It guides us in making everyday decisions, such as what items we definitely need to invest our money on, how to dress in-vogue, and what mindset we should have to prosper the most. Although advertising does help make life easier for most, at the same time it has negative affects on the people of society as well. Advertisement discreetly manipulates the beliefs, morals, and values of our culture, and it does so in a way that most of the time we don’t even realize it’s happened. In order to reach our main goal of

Upon a quick glance, the advertisement published in 2015 by Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa appears to be abundant in color, joyful and fairytale-like; at least when I first saw it a year ago. However, after reading about the different variations of objectification in advertisements I no longer see the ad as an innocent take on fairytales. Advertisements are meant to be geared to a public, or a specific public, in order to sell a product. Still, some ads showcase women as the product or at least a way to get people to purchase the product. Although any gender, culture, religion, or group can be victims of objectification in advertisements, women are mainly targeted.

If women were portrayed in this way, there would be protests and numerous abusive comments on twitter. Am I the only one who is bothered by this advertisement? Short answer. No. Comments made on social media in response to

This type of subtle stereotype is easily pointed out when looking at this ad because the first thing you notice is a big breasted, scandalously dressed women lying down. The woman is lying under the man, which gives the negative message of women being less important or worthless when it comes to her male counterpart. Mock assaults by men over this woman could be said in a variety of different ways. Men could say she’s dressed like a slut, looks like she puts out, has a nice rack, or a variety of other insults. Woman being portrayed as less important then men and objects of insults can only lead our youth in the wrong direction. Women in general, no matter what age, are left to feel inferior or just degraded when it comes to comparing them to males. The lying down gives women the feeling of being below males in the overall outside viewpoint, and being the object of male mock assaults gives them the feeling of embarrassment, which can only lead to mental pain.

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.

There are a couple of groups that this type of ad seems to really connect with and sink in. The first being the young, the reckless and those longing for love. Then there are those who want to feel that way, again. An older person in their 70’s and has recently retired, sees this ad, days of their youth would flood back in. This image captures the present and the past for both parties.

What is created is the notion that sex is an important instrument in selling. Moreover, the ad designer from my point of view is biased and not trustworthy and seems to have a snobbish attitude. The connotation is that individuals will care about and associate with the good looking while the less attractive individuals are isolated or shunned as it is with the female in the left. This implies that the plain girl on the left without the whiskey bottle will lose many opportunities as the ones that are at the disposal of the more sexually enticing female in the advert and who appeals to the audience (Prieler, pg.873-874).

It looks like we all hold some kind of silent agreement on women as collateral to men. By constant maintenance of two-gender system, we are confirming a secondary role of a women. Our everyday actions, things we buy in the stores, expectations we have from people are nourishing multiple stereotypes about men and women. Stereotypes of weak female and strong men, of disregarded femininity and exalted masculinity. Stereotypes that help to regulate and preserve gender norms. We all doing gender in one way or another, “virtually any activity may be held accountable for performance of that activity as a woman or a man.” (West, Zimmerman, 1987, p. 136). Media, advertising, pop culture are merely material evidences of our social order. Multiple ads and campaigns in fashion magazines, that are oriented to women audience, are depicting women as submissive and subordinate to man! Women who observing these ads subconsciously get another proof of their secondary nature, proof that helps to continually feed the gender stereotypes and maintain the idea of maleness and masculinity as driven force of the mankind. Inadequate portrayal of women and downgraded femininity is harmful for both men and women, as well as over praised masculinity is dangerous for everyone. As long as we keep policing woman, control her appearance and body, regulate her position in the society, we will be getting commercials like this. But, who knows, may be if we would see more advertisements like pic. 8, our respect of woman and admiration of femininity change in better

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

Hearing about this causes the audience to feel fear for kids and their safety, anger toward the people who would produce an ad like this, or even disgust towards pedophiles. Kilbourne later tells the audience, “When women are objectified, there is always the threat of sexual violence, there is always intimidation, there is always the possibility of danger.” This causes the reader to feel scared about the dangers caused by the ads that take away a woman's humanity and overall safety by reducing them to an inanimate

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

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

The most conspicuous part of the advertisement is the image of the woman in front of a black background so that only her face is visible. This in itself is important because it is automatically making her face the focus of the advertisement and not her body. Unlike most advertisements in which a woman’s body is exploited to sell products to men, the UN Women advertisement draws attention to her eyes, therefore making her your equal, since you have to make eye contact with her instead of looking anywhere else on her body. She is completely expressionless, looking at the viewer with a blank stare, a totally blank slate onto which viewer’s reflect their own views. Even more important, the woman pictured is a Muslim woman, as displayed by her hijab. The hijab is widely seen in western society as a form of oppression by men, to make women subservient to them, and by juxtaposing an ad for equality with the