The Glorification of Violence, Sex and Gender in Advertising

Advertisements are everywhere, combining images and words together to create a message to sell a product. The initial impression is that the advertisers are just trying to sell their products, but there often seems to be an underlying message. It is often heard that “sex sells.” So, many advertisers will use beautiful women and men in their advertisements to try to market a product. The hope is that “sex will sell,” and people will go out and buy what the ads are selling. There are many advertisements and commercials that use this approach. Prime examples of this are the advertisements for Orbit Gum and A Diamond is Forever. Also, the commercials for Levi jeans use sex to promote the sale of their brand. As a way to

Advertising is one of the most popular ways to promote a product. Through advertisement the creators of these products can make millions of dollars, depending on how successful their advertisements are. But are the advertisement selling a product that will help them or are they selling violence and sex? Many ads can influence people in different ways. One of these ways is to show women as objects of rape and sexual abuse. In, “Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt” Kilbourne talks about how many ads use women and portray them only as sexual beings. Some of these ads can influence violence against women. Kilbourne described violence in ads, “as in pornography, usually power over another, either by physical dominance.” (269). The Dolce & Gabbana

In Jean Kilbourne’s essay, “Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt”: Advertising and Violence, she paints a picture of repression, abuse, and objectification of women. Kilbourne gives an eye-opening view to the way American advertisers portray women and girls. Throughout the essay she has images that depict women in compromising poses. These images are examples of how often we see women in dehumanizing positions in advertisements and how desensitized we have become. Kilbourne implores us to take the media more seriously. She is putting a microscope on society and showing that the objectification of women is acceptable.

Today's media is increasingly pornographic, and the notion that 'sex sells' has infiltrated the advertising of virtually all products and services. Both men and women are sexualized in contemporary media, but the extent to which women are sexualized is far greater that men are. Jean Kilbourne states in her talk, The Dangerous Ways Ads See Women, "There are stereotypes that harm men, of course, but they tend to be less personal, less related to the body." The stereotypes that drive the portrayal of women in the media lead to the repeated objectification, particularly sexual objectification,

In “Two Ways a Woman Can get Hurt: Advertising and Violence,” the author Jean Kilbourne describes how advertising and violence is a big problem for women. Although her piece is a little scrambled, she tries to organize it with different types of advertisement. Women are seen as sex objects when it comes to advertising name brand products. Corporate representatives justify selling and marketing for a product by how a woman looks. Kilbourne explains how the media is a big influence on how men perceive women. Kilbourne tries to prove her point by bashing on advertising agencies and their motives to successfully sell a product. Kilbourne’s affirmation towards advertisements leaves you no doubt that she is against them.

Advertisements are all over the place. Whether they are on TV, radio, or in a magazine, there is no way that you can escape them. They all have their target audience who they have specifically designed the ad for. And of course they are selling their product. This is a multi billion dollar industry and the advertiser’s study all the ways that they can attract the person’s attention. One way that is used the most and is in some ways very controversial is use of sex to sell products

Dominance over woman is also a huge role in violence in advertisements. The dominance over women is brutally shown in this advertising of the women in the diagramed picture. In a society in which violence against women is normalized, this ad is accepted and considered. This means that it has become a normalcy to see a women naked in an advertisement. In places where this ad is shown, millions of women and girls are raped, beaten, and trafficked

Have you ever picked up a magazine and browse through it for five minutes? How many pages do you think you saw in the time you had? Not many. Now, how many women you saw posing in different ways to sell a product? A lot right. From selling a hamburger to a 2016 new car a woman is portray as one more object to sell a product. We see it in newspapers, magazines, on television, the internet and it has reached to the point that wherever you look there’s a sexual advertisement. We live under a lot of advanced technology that nowadays advertising plays a huge role in our society. According to National Domestic Violence statistics state that twenty-four people per minute are victims of some type of violence by an intimate partner in the United States. Jean Kilbourne in her article “Two ways a woman can get hurt: advertising and violence” argues how these advertisements affects us, how we don’t care about it because it is seen as “normal” nowadays and how it impacts us in our daily lives. Emphasizing that its target is to dehumanize and objectify women because nothing material fulfills our needs. All this advertising going around encourages certain ways of acting and leads to misunderstandings, they are harming us more than they are helping us. Meaning that they are teaching and giving false messages to young relationships. Consequently, man and women are being misrepresented as sex symbols and tools by the media. Therefore, how all these advertisements contribute to affect

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

Everyone has heard the phrase “sex sells.” It seems to be a major factor that drives people to buy. Advertisers manipulate this behavior by creating ads that showcase their products as a way to gain love, beauty, and desirability. Advertisers frequently use sex appeal with flirtatious images as an attention grabbing device to play with the public’s emotions. Because the public is a diverse group of individuals, it is difficult to target the masses by focusing on hobbies, sports, or flaws. Because of this, advertisers target sexuality, something everyone can relate to. In the February, 2016 issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine, they overtly demonstrate this. In an ad for Kinky Vodka, they represent multiple sexual innuendoes such as provocative body posing, stereotypical feminine colors, and seductive wording.

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

Sexual assault and violence is increasing due to advertisements misinforming people into believing that such behavior is acceptable. “In the 1960’s Kilbourne found that she received more recognition for her looks rather than her intelligence” (Grean and Lidinisky, 490). Perhaps this is why Kilbourne wrote her book, Deadly Persuasion, analyzing this problem. Kilbourne found herself in the environment bubble the media is creating where the objective analysis of people is acceptable. Kilbourne’s book is an attempt to bring awareness towards how much harm the media’s portrayal of people is generating. Kilbourne’s book is mainly targeted towards women, and is trying to spur them towards action in an attempt to change the world and, more

Sexualizaton and objectification in the advertisements we see and the media we watch has become a very strong issue in our society. With the idea that “sex sells”, consumers don’t even realize that they’re not viewing the advertisements for what they are, but for the women (or men) that are being portrayed in a very erotic way, posed with whatever product they were hired to sell. Many articles have been written so far to challenge and assess this problem, but one written by Jean Kilbourne (1999), “”Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt”: Advertising and Violence” holds an extensive amount of authority. Using her personal experience with the subject, as well as studies she has conducted herself on the topic of sexualization, she talks about how the amount of sexualization in advertising affects how society views the culture and products consumers buy. She also notes that because of the quantity and prevalence of these ads, the rate of all forms of sexual assault, specifically rape (mostly towards women of all age), increase, as well as other forms of assault. It is important to examine Kilbourne’s use of rhetorical devices, such as ethos, pathos, and logos, and how effective these devices make her article. This way, it can be examined for its validity and her understanding of her own research. Kilbourne’s article is very effective through her uses of pathos and ethos, but at the same time, it loses its effectiveness through her absence of a counter-argument, as well as a lack

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

The use of sex in advertising may create unrealistic ideals for men regarding women, however, it is a powerful tool for selling products. Through the years advertisers have shown through their advertisements that sex does sell products. Especially when selling to the male viewers. Sex is the second strongest of the psychological appeals, right behind self-preservation, and its strength is biological and instinctive, the genetic imperative of reproduction (Taflinger). Sexual desire is an instinctive reaction in animals, and a person?s perception of a suitable mate is the basis (Taflinger). That perception is usually a set of criteria that the opposite sex must meet, and those that meet and exceed those criteria will provide the chance for