Pozner's Objectification Of Women In Advertising

In our society today a business is not a business without an advertisement. These advertisements advertise what American’s want and desire in their lives. According to Jack Solomon in his essay, “Master’s of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising,” Jack Solomon claims: “Because ours is a highly diverse, pluralistic society, various advertisements may say different things depending on their intended audiences, but in every case they say something about America, about the status of our hopes, fears, desires, and beliefs”(Solomon). Advertisers continue to promote the American dream of what a women’s body should look like. They advertise their products in hopes for consumers to buy them, so they can look like the models pictures in the ads. Behind these ads, advertisers tend to picture flawless unrealistic woman with the help of Photoshop. In our society today to look like a model is an American dream and can be the reasons why we fantasizes and buy these products being advertised. “America’s consumer economy runs on desire, and advertising stokes the engines by transforming common objects;signs of all things that Americans covet most”(Solomon).

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.

If you were somewhat hip during the last few years, then you have seen an American Apparel ad. Most, if not all, American Apparel ads feature borderline nude women in extremely exposing poses. For example, one controversial ad is a full body picture of a skinny young woman wearing nothing but American Apparel socks. This theme of hypersexualizing women is very common in advertisements, and especially for products targeted toward men, such as cologne and beer. Many of these ads feature stereotypically attractive and hyper-fit women in little to no clothing bending over in suggestive ways have

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.

The Carl’s Jr Tex Mex Bacon Thickburger Commercial shown on television is a clear example of how women are objectified in advertising. The ad is to promote the idea of the new TexMex thickburger but how you may ask? It includes two models representing Mexico and the other United States. Both women are in tight fitted cheeky bikinis competing over whether the fast food is “Tex” or “Mex” playing volleyball. The idea of the commercial was made to appeal to men in seeking an attraction from the target audience using women in a sexual aesthetic. As both men are watching from the bleachers they are sure enjoying the women compete on who is right. “Should we tell them it’s both?” a man watching the game adds before his friend is quick to answer “eventually”, this bodily language emphasizes that both men already know it’s both Tex and Mex combined but want to watch the women as they are jumping around playing dirty in such bikinis. The ad has created a way to lure men to purchase a specific brand of burger using women’s body. Generally, it’s a win win situation because advertisements affect cultural ideas and what people desire, the influence of individuals is overlooked more than the actual persuading of buying the product. In “Can’t Buy My Love” and Killing Us Softly by Jean Kilbourne she relates society as a passive mirror where advertisements develop an effective pervasive medium of influence because as people consume ads they see they will eventually base it off themselves personally. With ad’s constantly lingering, our mind is presented to subconsciously process the ad and the sexual appearances. Therefore, by showing these attractive women as a highlight, it advertises the objective of women in making you crave this specific burger.

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 creator has to choose the right model for their ad, and the right model has to possess the perfect finesse to please the ad, but also possess the right finesse to please the intended viewer, plus other on-lookers who will have opinions on the portrayal of the ads. In Pozner’s article, she uses the Dove ad, and the backlash of this ad was based on a few things: First, the women used in the ad, were a good touch, but it is not allowing women to be completely comfortable in their skin, because the ad’s purpose is to create a solution for these types of women who have certain superficial issues. Secondly, the women used are too average, and they are showing viewers false hope, allowing them to think that it is acceptable to look out of shape, obese and other similar characteristics (Pozner 3). Third, men are superficial so the women placed in these, “female-targeted” ads must be a “fantasy babe” that allows for the superficial needs of men to be fulfilled, as said by Richard Roeper (Pozner

According to Steve Craig’s research, women can be presented in commercials in several variants. Company’s mainly showed very thin actresses in this type of commercials, which can lead to the assumption, that only thin woman, can be beautiful and healthy. As a result, many female receivers fall into the obsession with their weight, which sometimes can have negative effects. (Craig,

Pozner also focuses on Lucio Guerrero’s comments such as “These disturbing and frightening women should put some clothes on (please, really) because ads should be about the beautiful people. They should include the unrealistic, the ideal or the unattainable look for which so many people strive. Besides, the only time I want to see a thigh that big is in a bucket with crumbs on it.” (Pozner, 216).

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 have been seen as objectives since the dawn of time. They’ve been viewed as inferior to men, second-class citizens, and their primary role being giving birth, preparing food and doing domestic/household duties. If we look around today, women are surrounded with objectification, from fashion to films and even product advertisements. Women are put into positions of objects i.e. sexual objects. Objectification is harmful. It only portrays women as things of pleasure and benefit to men. It’s all about viewing and treating an individual as if they have to thoughts and feelings, which, therefore, is not beneficial to an individual.

Although some argue that advertisements do not reflect society, I believe that idealized female figure in advertisements, from the Cultural Revolution to modern China, can not only reflect changes of real social value but also suggest core value of society itself, based on women’s physical appearance and level of control in ads.

Advertising has a huge effect on how women perceive their own bodies, good or bad, but mostly bad. The media has been using models that are portrayed with the thin-ideal, the fetishization of thin bodied women, for so long and it has really taken a toll on women viewers. This paper describes the many problems and ramifications that advertisements centered on thin women has on people that view them.

The objectification of women is a huge issue in society and is often led by advertising. However many men still believe that the adverts depicting women in a sexual and often passive posture are not very offensive but rather very funny or sexy. However how would they feel if it were their daughter or sister being advertised throughout the world as a sex object?

Research Proposal From television commercials to radio to print ads, advertising has defined the meaning of perfection. Most notably, advertising dictates what to eat, what to wear, where to go and who to be seen with. At the same time that childhood obesity is at an all time high, women in our society are facing advertising 's idealized portrayal of unrealistic bodies. Anorexia nervosa, bulimia and a multitude of other self inflicted diseases are running rampant in societies nationwide. Our group was intrigued by the relationship between women and advertising. College aged women often find themselves as the target of many advertisements. At a time when women are told to define themselves and mature, advertisers recognize their