Sex And Advertising

According to Miriam Webster, advertising is defined as "information, public notice". Everyday, this so-called information uses the sexuality of individuals to sell products. Advertising degrades a woman's worth in society and uses her body to sell items such as cars, jewelry, and beverages. Those most often exploited are our mothers, daughters, and sisters. Beautiful women, scantily dressed give us incentive to buy products, whenever the incentive is to be with these females, or as in most cases, to be like them. Because of this is exploitation, women believe they have to live up to an unachievable standard of beauty. If they fail to reach these ideas, they are made to feel worthless.

Advertising is effective because it organizes people and motivates them to buy certain products, teaching them to be, above all, consumers. It is "the propaganda of American society, and one of the most powerful forces of education" (Kilbourne). It is how we learn our attitudes, and our attitudes shape our actions. The foundation of the mass media, advertising tells us that everything can be bought, and that products can fulfill us-even meet our deepest human needs. In a capitalist society where dissatisfaction is key, advertising is very convincing. It convinces us to buy products to better ourselves so that we may fit the ideal advertisers have made for us.

The ideal woman is based on flawlessness: no lines, wrinkles, blemishes, and scars-no pores. She is human. This look can only be achieved cosmetically, and is the only standard of beauty in our culture (Kilbourne). "Deep in many girls hearts lies an impossible standard-long blonde hair, long, long legs, a slim, tall body, and perpetual youth. Call it Barbie" (Winegar 1 E). Dr. Lesley J. Dlugokinski, a clinical psychologist from Oklahoma City, suggests that many of the messages linking a woman's value to her beauty are deeply rooted in Western Culture, beginning with ancient myths and fairtales like "Sleeping Beauty" (qtd. in Kinka).

So much emphasis placed on appearance that a woman's lovability and desirability rely on it. An advertisement for a weight loss clinic reads: " I'd probably never be married now if I hadn't lost forty-nine pounds'-which one woman said was the best advertisement for fat she'd ever seen" (Kilbourn). Such advertisements only reaffirm that being beautiful is a result of the products we buy, not who we are inside. Physical appearance seems to define a woman's worth.

In most advertisements, the woman's body is used as an object, and whatever her body is like, it will not do; it must change. Every part of the body must be altered. For many women in America, how they look often determines how they feel about themselves, impacting their self-esteem. "The message regardingÐ'...physical beauty is so pervasive that even women with wonderful talents, attributes, skills and intellect don't feel those are enough" (Winegar 1-E). Women are judged solely on appearance and are put into competition with each other's looks; if a woman does achieve the desire look, she loses love of other women.

"The essential selling traits used in the portrayal of women are alluring, decorative, and traditional" (Courtney 9). The trend of using women for allurement or decoration is found mostly in advertisements for beverages and automobiles. The sexual implications are more than obvious in selling a product that has nothing to do with sex. These types of advertisements are found throughout mainly men's magazines, selling "manly" products.

Advertisers subliminally integrate sexual ideas into the selling of products. They realize that many times that people do not read the copy, so they use photographs to exploit sexuality in males and females in the shape of the products or the way the models are positioned. An advertisement for Love's Baby Soft perfume reads: "Because innocence is sexier than you think": (Kilbourne). In the advertisement, an adult woman is presented as a child. She is dressed as a little girl, but she is sitting with her legs apart, skirt slightly raised. She has a visible cleavage and is sucking in a looipop. The shape of the perfume bottle is clearly phallic, and the implicit meanings in the advertisement tell women not to be mature or grown up and to stay passive, powerless, and dependent (Kilnourne).

On the other hand, some advertisements, even try to cover the fact that they are bluntly using sexuality to sell their products. In some advertisements, women are naked, wearing only the product for sale. The use of their bodies to sell these products, which have nothing to do with being naked, is disgusting. Their sexuality is only being used to catch the eye of the consumer.

Feminine things are constantly devalued, which causes women to devalue themselves and men to devalue women. Women are being devalued each time an advertisement depicts a woman as an object. "Turning a human being into an object is the first step in justifying violence toward that person" (Kilbourne). Men are portrayed as violent and brutal in advertisements, and their body language sends a message to tell all men to be in control, and always uses power, threat, and intimidation. A billboard for a Rolling Stones album cover reads, "I'm black and blue from the Rolling Stones, and I Love It" (Kilbourne). Such advertisements give the implication that women love and deserve to be beaten. An even more appalling advertisement for men's boots headlines, "Treat'em good and they'll treat you good" (Kilbourne). It shows a woman straddling a man's leg, pulling his boot off. The copy read, "Some men treat their boots better than their women; not all together admirable, but certainly understandable" (Kilbourne). Battery of women is presented as a joke. People who are opposed to violent and sexist advertisement must organize to remove them, and the products they sell from our lives.

Four general stereotypes of women are; "a woman's place is in the home; women do not make important decisions or do important things; women are dependent and need a man's