The Role Of Gender And Advertising On Women

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.

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 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.

Jean Kilbourne’s 2010 documentary Killing Us Softly 4 discusses the idea that the businesses of advertising and commercialism have promoted specific body ideals for women in our modern day society by the methods in which they market towards their target audiences, specifically how women are portrayed in their ads. Throughout the documentary, Kilbourne is extremely critical of the advertising industry, accusing it of misconduct. She argues that objectification and superficial, unreal portrayal of women in these advertisements lower women’s self-esteem. Women have many industries that try to gear their products towards them with apparel, beauty, and toiletries being amongst the most prominent. The majority of advertisements put out by companies

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.

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 essay discusses the representations of women in media and advertising, including the effects they have on individuals in society. Firstly, I will review the literature on stereotypical gender roles within media and advertising. This will include traditional roles such as the housewife, and modern roles such as the sex object. Secondly, I will critically evaluate and examine the effects of these roles on women, and even men, in today’s society. Effects include body dissatisfaction, thin idealisation and, in extreme cases, violence against women. Thirdly, I will aim to make conclusions on whether gender representations and roles within media have impacts on men and women in society.

Advertisements are made to grasp a consumer’s attention to the item the creators are selling, and sometimes the decide to objectify an entire audience in hopes of receiving attention from the male population. Studies have shown that as time passes, women become less affected and offended by the oversexualization of women in advertisements. Therefore, women have become desensitized to their objectification, to the point they now view it as normal. During the initial period of the hypersexualization of women, advertisements about women in traditional roles such as housewife or being in the kitchen, receded. In 1991 a new wave of feminism appeared, where women are trying to reclaim their bodies by embracing sexuality, while it is a good concept,

The impact of advertising on perceived gender roles is quite evident, and with plenty of consequences, some of which we might not yet have experienced the full effect of. It is important to remember that with a socialized consumer identity, the choices we make are not individual ones, but is initiated by the manipulative skills of “others”. The high extent of advertisement we are put through on a daily basis makes it very difficult to reflect upon the idea of choices and individual

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

Gender portrayal in advertising has been a widely discussed and researched topic for years by social scientists, consumers, and advertisers alike. However, many people have looked at the topic solely from the perspective of male and female consumers and the effect that gendered advertisements have on them. In an article from The Journal of Advertising, Linda Tuncay Zayer and Catherine A. Coleman researched this topic from a different angle. The article, Advertising Professionals’ Perceptions of the Impact of Gender Portrayals on Men and Women: A Question of Ethics, analyzes the issue from the advertiser’s perceptions of what they are putting out in the media. Zayer and Coleman had two central research questions: “What are advertising professionals’ perceptions of how gender portrayals impact male and female audiences? In what ways do ethics inform their creative and strategic choices regarding gender portrayals in advertising?” (Zayer and Coleman 2015). Research was completed with two rounds of data collection on a wide variety of informants with different levels of experience in the industry (Zayer and Coleman 2015). Research methods included semi-structured and unstructured interviews, a focus group, and field operations (Zayer and Coleman 2015). After research was completed, the informants were placed in four different categories based off three interrelated dimensions of their research. The three dimensions are; (1) the extent to which

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.

The portrayal of women in advertisements has changed many times over the years. Women often appear as a sexual object in any kind of advertisement or as an attractive material standing nearby a product. Many companies which include the tobacco industry, alcohol companies as well as clothing and electronic and entertainment industries have used women to reach a target demographic which is typically males between the age of 18-34, in order to sell or market a specific brand. Advertisements objectify women by selectively targeting audiences in order to portray a set of debatable images and or styles even for women to aspire to. The use of women in this particular sense is widespread amongst all major forms of media(tv, print, radio,

Cultural beliefs and values are emphasized through advertisement, which is a powerful weapon in society. In order to sell a product women were being objectified and viewed lower than men. Women have to look, act and do certain things in a certain way in order to be accepted in society. Women were viewed with stereotypical ideas and sexualization in the world of advertisement during the 1900’s.