The Role Of Advertising In Advertising

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

We've all seen and read many advertisements and we usually find them appealing and very persuasive. However the question is, what are they really advertising? Women are usually used for many different advertisements, not only are they used for women's clothing but also for other materials and objects. These are the ads that we look at each and every day. In, “Killing Us Softly” by Jean Kilbourne, she introduces her problem with how women are being used to advertise products. She shows us ads that she has seen where women are being used to advertise a company’s product. While our women are being used, dehumanized, and sexualized in our society, we’re going on with our life like it’s normal.

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.

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.

In recent discussion of the drastic marketing campaigns that companies utilize a controversial issue whether the massive growth of popular culture in today’s diverse society has created a need for mass advertisement and marketing. From this perspective, advertisement and marketing companies continue to exploit the slogan “Sex Sells.” Advertisement campaigns continue to target women as a sex object for men’s sexual prejudice. The main idea behind this campaign is that men’s needs are more important and significant, and women’s are not. Advertisement and marketing campaigns have gone too far and they devalue women. As Steve Craig said in his article “Men’s Men and Women’s Women”: “Advertisers therefore portray different images of men and women in order to exploit the different deep-seated motivations and anxieties connected to gender identity” (189). What Steve Craig refers to is that

Since the 1960s and the rebirth of the women’s movement, there have been rages against the way women are treated in advertising. Every day viewers will find themselves showered by explicit advertisements, images, slogans, songs, ads, etc., all that which have a major underlying issue within mass media: the objectification of women. Women were suggestively portrayed for the sale of all different types of products and services, from print in magazines to commercials on television. There is an extremely strong focus on women being a sexual object rather than what she is, a female human being.

This paper focuses on gender roles in advertisements and further analyzes the affect these advertisements have on women. Gender roles refer to the ways in which individuals are expected to act based on their gender. These roles are very prevalent in society, and because of this, are also depicted heavily in advertisements. Although men do receive negative messages from advertisements, this paper focuses more on women because of the amount of violence and stereotypes that are depicted towards them in these ads.

Advertising is an elemental part of today’s society. It is a profitable industry which influences our lives and lifestyle choices sometimes without us even knowing. Brands tend to use immoral tactics to get the viewers’ attention and a commonly used tactic is the objectification and sexualisation of women. Using three contemporary advertisements as examples, this essay will focus on the objectification and sexualisation of women within the chosen advertisements and the semiotics behind the images.

In society, advertisement has created unrealistic standards which are shown silencing women and empowering men. You will be amazed by what these ads actually make you perceive as normal and what everyone thinks you should be? Advertisement in today's society is continuously using the same generic features, these generic features are gender stereotypes, male gaze and objectifying. Advertisement in today’s society can be very blunt and

Women in advertisements have always been portrayed negatively due to degrading stereotypes, making them feel self-conscious and stopping them from doing things from fear of judgement. “Fear of judgement is stopping many of us from taking part in exercise. But as thousands of women up and down the country are proving, it really doesn’t have to” (This girl can, 2015). Advertisers are conscious that stereotypes are not an exact representation of women, but ads with sexy women sell, therefore they have no reason to change them. Advertisers love to use gender representation as according to Barthel (1988), they restructure adverts exploiting gender identity to attract people’s attention and

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

Jean Kilbourne is an activist and cultural theorist has been studying the images of women in advertisement for the past 40 years. In her lecture during the TEDx conference she discussed the ways how advertisement industry portrays women in the humiliating way. Vivid illustrations of advertising campaigns from different parts of the world and different decades help Jean Kilbourne to be more specific in her conclusions and more people can relate to them. This video can work as a helpful tool to prove that women are being constantly humiliated on media. Objectification of their bodies and selling products with the image of women who only take care of their families and homes creates negative images of modern women. Also it is important to conclude

The existence of a predominantly male society and the continuous perpetuation of patriarchy heavily affected the way woman are represented. Women may have been experiencing many privileges nowadays than women in the previous century could not, but there are stereotypes and imposed gender roles that linger, especially in the field of advertising. One of the common types of advertisements that are dominant today are the ones that depict women as a sexualized object to get the attention of the male audience. In the research conducted by Parul Nagi, it is shown that advertisements use women “to draw attention of prospective buyers” (85), and these buyers are mostly, if not all, men. This advertising strategy places the man in the position of the gazer, and the woman as the gazed (Mulvey 837). Advertisements depicting sexualized women rely on human pleasure appealing to the sense of sight. Thus, they tend to become pornographic, wherein “it dehumanizes and objectifies people” (Kilbourne 488), diminishing their worth to that of an object to be owned only for visual and/or sexual pleasure and easily disposed of.

Advertisement is to blame for the degradation of women. Women’s progression for gender equality is being slowed down by what is being shown on television commercials that screams to the female viewers, “Wear our revealing products, or suffer the social backlash of not being pretty enough!” While it may appear outlandish to say something of this magnitude, it becomes quite obvious when one looks at the facts of advertisement and the effects that are offset by showing impossible to achieve concepts of beauty.

Above all else, advertising is designed to get people's attention. It is not designed to be particularly moral or ethical in its orientation. That is why advertising often appeals to such base, human instincts as fear and sex. The sexual element of the one-sided appeal of the Secret Deodorant commercial entitled "Fear of Being Exposed" is evidenced by the use of a young, slender beautiful woman in a party dress lifting up her arms and looking seductively at the camera. The deodorant commercial suggests to the targeted woman consumer that she wants to be desirable, which means selecting a deodorant that does not leave heavy build-up under the arms. The ad suggests that beauty is the important concern for women, and women should want to seem sexy like the image of the woman in the photograph; it also encourages them to monitor themselves to ensure that their personal 'upkeep' meets social norms.' The persuasive appeal is conveyed through a very central, direct route.