Advertisements That Objectify Women in Order to Sell a Product

Advertising critique

Advertisements that Objectify Women in Order to Sell a Product

WS203 OC- Girls, Women, & Popular Culture

Dr. Rus

When browsing through a magazine, Internet, or even video the common dominator throughout them all is advertising. Ads are used to overshadow the content and inhibit approximately half of the magazine.  Even if you wanted to avoid or even limit the amount of ads one sees, it is almost nearly impossible as they are used to sell nearly everything and the sexual attraction within ads appeals to both males and females. They distort realities of perfection and project images through a lens of unhealthy perceptions of beauty and sexuality. Gendered stereotypes are commonly used in advertising to generate a social connotation that sexualize and objectify women rendering negative consequences mentally, physically, and psychologically.

Killing Us Softly 4 produces a film that unveils the sad reality of the truth behind the damaging and distorted portrayals of females used in print, film, and televised advertising. The film uncovers aspects regarding subconsciously processing ads, the negative consequences, and sexualized appearances. When our mind is presented with long after seeing the ad, our mind still subconsciously processes the ad. With ads constantly lingering, it can begin to produce negative consequences for individuals in various ways. Within advertising, women often look to pop culture for an approval on the way they dress, act, and even think.  Pop culture refers to “any cultural product that has a mass audience” (Lesson 2, Rus.) We all strive to achieve that ‘flawless look’ but society ideal of ‘flawlessness’ cannot be achieved. Photoshop. Photoshop has flawed our perceptions of beauty using an unfair method to attain the ‘perfect’ women. They have generated a program that enables editors to use four to five images of different women meshed together resulting in the finished product that often we only see. These distortions have had substantial impact on everyday women and young girls. We have turned women’s bodies into ‘things-objects’ by using breasts to sell almost anything and everything. Not only has there been a rise in non-cosmetic procedures, cosmetic procedures have also experienced an increase and rose to more than two million procedures each year. These procedures strictly based around altering your existing look to achieve a more ‘perfect’ image. The constant scrutinizing often triggers these insecurities on the body or physical appearance. The scrutinizing turns into obsessions and before you know it an eating order develops. We are stuck in a culture that encourages and teaches us to hate our bodies by either making us feel guilty about eating or developing an obsession with thinness. When in reality a quote that stuck out to me from the film stated that the “body type seen as acceptable in advertising is only in 5% of women, 95% don't have that body type” (Kilbourne, 2010.) The continuous struggle for ‘perfection’ has caused many individuals to go as far as losing their life from various eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia. From a young age people look up to celebrities and role models and we are now stuck in a society that begins to sell padded bras and thong panties for seven year olds. This is robbing our youth from healthy development and projecting sexuality onto the younger generations at a very early age.

With that being said, I began to examine outside images seen by others and myself daily. Advertising is so engrained into our society that it cannot be escaped. It is an outlet that has become so persuasive that it fuels our social norms and desirable trends. These trends are what is deemed as being normal and causes toxic effects on self-esteem. I found four ads online all belonging to different groupings. These categories for each ad consisted of food, vehicles, fashion, and jewelry. Each ad highly objectifies and sexualizes women in very alarming ways portraying them as easy, needy, and submissive. To begin, lets start with the Aston Martian ad with a vulnerable female half naked in heels with the slogan “you know you’re not the first, but do you really care?” The female within this ad is a tall, blonde, slim, tanned individual with her bottom half naked only containing heels and her one leg up opening her up to being placed in a vulnerable position. This advertisement is using the female physique to sell their high-end cars. This refers back to an idea mentioned in the video that stated how white, young, blond, thing women are desired by all nationalities. This ad utilized that particular technique to target all audiences with the sexualized female. With constantly being bombarded with various images similar to this one, leads to an increase in body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, and decrease in self-esteem. Mrs. Kilbourne also briefly mentioned the Burger King advertisement in the video. It depicts a picture of an attractive blonde women wearing bright red lipstick with her mouth wide open about to eat a large sandwich. The wording totally sexually objectifies women by stating in big bold letters "It'll Blow your mind away." Underneath the image it says the ‘BK super seven incher’, which is making a sexual reference to the size of a man’s genitals and referencing that women would love this. This totally degrades women by promoting the message of sex and sexualization and tying it into the image of food. It is a fact that the products themselves today are being sexualized to sell. These sexualized images and advertisements are designed to promote, and send out the message especially directed to women to shop. The Advertisers are selling the idea of shopping through the hidden messages in their sexist advertisements mainly directed towards women. Interestingly enough however it was mentioned in the video that these distorted messages are also starting to be targeted towards males now as well. ‬The next ad consists of the designer label Dolce & Gabanna. The company has produced a very provocative and absolutely degrading sexist advertisement. It shows a women lying down all dressed up in a very suggestive position with a handsome shirtless man overtop of her. There are three other men standing around looking onto them. This image totally objectifies and shows men in a dominating position over the woman. It totally desensitizes women to violence and encourages domination and forcefulness. The sad reality is images like this promote dominance of men over women and in reality partners or husbands kill women each year and violence against woman is on a rise. ‬The last ad, being the Natan Jewelers advertisement I found online is a high-end jewelry store. It has allowed an advertisement to sell a ring by sexualizing it to the image of a woman. On the first side of the Ad the ring box is closed with a women's legs being shown in a short dress and crossed. The wording on the ad states "the first remote control ever invented" with the picture directly beside it showing the ring box open as well as her legs. This image totally objectifies the act of a woman being welcoming to a man. It's almost like the double standard as mentioned in the video Killing Us Softly 4. Women should be sexy but innocent. If you are you will receive gifts, unfortunately that is a prime example of sexualization objectifying a women. ‬