The Negative Impact Of Women In Advertising

Every time you flip a magazine, change channels, or go online, you are struck with images of models who are super skinny with flashy outfits and have excessive make-up on. Ads not only try to sell their products, but also promote how females should look like. These models are airbrushed and photo shopped which is false advertisement. The media progressively encourages a thinner body image as the ideal for women. We see advertisements every day. Some of these ads use manipulative strategies that influence our choices and spending habits. For example, “One in every three articles in leading teen girl magazines included a focus on appearance, and most advertisements used appeal to beauty to sell their products.”(Teen Health) To grab the viewers’ attention, especially females, they include

Advertisers often emphasize sexuality and the importance of physical attractiveness in an attempt to sell products, but researchers are concerned that this places pressure on women to focus more on their appearances. As stated in an article from Body Image and Advertising, the average woman sees 400 to 600 advertisements per day and by the time she is 17 years old, she has received over 250,000 commercial messages through the media. While only 9% of advertisements have a direct statement about beauty, many more implicitly emphasize the importance of beauty- particularly those that target both women and girls. (HealthyPlace)

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).

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.

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

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.

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

In the twenty-first century, both men and women have become targeted groups in advertising. Both target markets are flooded with images and content that promotes stereotypical sexual identities that are based on sexual images as well as cultural notions of gender roles. When flipping through a magazine a woman or girl would see ads for cosmetic surgery, makeup, wedding dresses, perfume, diets, jewelry and the list goes on. Women are affected on many levels by the flawless, airbrushed and idealized models when viewing such advertisements. Although women have been the subject of such advertising methods for centuries, men are also now bombarded with similar messages regarding perceived norms of idealized gender roles. Men are sent the message that they are to be physically fit, successful, and to judge women on their physical characteristics as well as their fashion ability.

81% of ten year olds are afraid of being overweight. That doesn’t sound right does it? Well this terrifying statistic is true. In almost every ad that contains a women her body is usually unattainable. Due to this most girls grow up to have confidence issues because their bodies are not “perfect” or like the model in the ad who is most likely starving herself.

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 objectification of the female body is constant through every form of media within our culture. Societal and cultural ideals place pressure on women of all age groups on what their ideal body should be and much of this is done through the advertising industry which is dictated by males. Advertisements, are a announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event. Through advertising we have depicted an ideal culture, with values, moral, and beliefs. Our western culture has evolved along with use of advertisement, the use of new advertising mediums, mass consumption of advertisements and the depiction of gender, in particular representation of women. On average Americans encounter 3,000 advertisements a day, and at the center

Gender roles in the workplace are a common topic as equal pay is a right still being fought for today. Through these advertisements looking for workers, it demonstrates the differences expected by the genders in the 30s, 60s, and within the past 30 years.

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

Large corporations will do what it takes to sell their products. Sex sells and has for a long time there for businesses exploit this while negative stereo types are associated with women. This may not seem like an issue for some however the sexism people see in advertisements find their way into the status quo. Young children even educated adults absorb the information they see in advertisements and deem what they represent appropriate and then reproduce it essentially dehumanizing women. Vintage advertisements like “mickeys” have been scrutinized for objectifying women to gain sales, as we look back at these sexist ads today we can see some of those traits in the modern-day advertisement industry. To fix this objectification of women

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.