The Roles Of Advertising : The Sexualization 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).

Throughout the years, makeup and skin care advertisements have been some of the most viewed and produced of all time. Even from the time I was a little girl until now, I can remember watching advertisements for beauty products. There have been major changes in aspects of these advertisements from the distant past to now, and I can even recall changes within my lifetime. Beauty advertisements today show much more diversity in terms of gender and race. They also reflect the immense changes society has gone through regarding the way beauty is perceived. Many years ago, beauty advertisements would focus on men’s standards for women’s beauty, which is not the case today. The message and models depicted in beauty advertisements from the early 1900’s to modern day have evolved tremendously in a positive way.

Advertisements are literally everywhere, from ad pop-ups on your computer to the billboards you can see driving down the road. The purpose of these advertisements are to sell a specific item to an audience. The audience being the consumers and the ads being products such consumers purchase, the advertisements try to persuade the viewers that they need that item and that they should buy their companies product. While Schneider alcoholic beverages attempt to sell their product to adults through their advertisements by using very suggestive advertisement method which sexualized alcohol. In addition to using ethos, pathos, and logos to draw in their audience. Lastly, how this sexualized imagery is effecting the world

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

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.

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 her fourth installment of “Killing Us Softly”, Jean Kilbourne explores the image of women that American advertising industries have created in our society. Kilbourne breaks down the trends that advertisements constantly reinforce for women throughout the decades, and criticizes the impossible standards that women are shamed into trying to achieve. She allows us to take a deeper look at the exploitative, sexist, and misogynistic tendencies embedded in commercial culture, which is presented everywhere we look. Proceeding to emphasize that these ads have damaging effects in the real world, leading to violence against women, eating disorders, and low self esteem. Furthermore, Kilbourne acknowledges that although things have changed through the

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.

Killing Us Softly, a short film produced by Cambridge Documentary Films, graphically and effectively depicts the harm caused by modern day media and advertisements. I was personally affected by this movie, for Jean Kilbourne paints a vivid picture of how advertisement influence individuals perceptions of themselves and the world around them. Kilbourne describes how current advertisements present one type of women; tall, Caucasian, and almost always very skinny. This portrayal of beauty in media and in the fashion industry has set unrealistic expectations for young woman all throughout the country, and has consequently lead to widespread body image dissatisfaction. Furthermore, the objectification of women in these ads has had profound effects on increasing violence against women. I found the information explained in this short film to be thought provoking, and Kilbourne’s analysis was insightful. I find myself now hyper aware of the messages that advertisement agencies are sending out, and the more I pondered the impacts they have on society, the more I realize how large of an issue this really is. Kilbourne mentions early in the film that while her Killing Us Softly campaign began forty years ago, and even though the topic of media literacy has gotten more attention, the issue itself has only gotten worse. The key take aways from this film, such as the impact of a singular type of woman being portrayed as beautiful, the objectification of women, and how that

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

Generalized Labeled Stereotypes In modern society, there are men and women who show all different characters and images with messages they give out. Men and women prefer to craft their own form of images as a representation of who they are in terms of physical appearances and personality. However, the idea that men and women should have the perfect image became a social norm. The spark of this idea for men and women was from the media which tells society to conform to their idealistic image.

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 average person sees countless advertisements every day of their life. From a typical television commercial to advertisements printed on everyday objects such as water bottles, it sometimes seems like advertising companies have found a way to incorporate ads into every aspect of daily life. It is because of this ubiquity that it is important to examine and regulate the content of these ads. Many groups of people find themselves represented in a negative way within the media, and one of the best examples of this phenomenon is the disembodiment and hyper-sexualization of women. The constant objectification of women in Western advertising is an issue that ultimately leads to a society in which women have low self-worth.

This is an advertisement for NATAN, a women’s fashion company. In the ad, there are two similar photos shown: one of which shows a white man presenting a closed jewellery box to a white woman who is sitting in a short dress, heels and has her legs crossed. In the second photo, it shows the same man and woman but a different scenario in which the man has opened the jewellery box to show a ring. In response to the ring the woman has opened her legs. The ad is captioned, ‘The first remote control ever invented…’ (Juergen, 2015).

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.