Sexualized Representation Of Women In Advertising

Over the years there has been a shift in the depiction of women’s bodies and how they are presented in advertising. While in early advertising, it was the home that was the ideal focus for women’s attention and from which their value was judged, in the 21st century it is the body. “Today, the body is portrayed in advertising and many other parts of the media as the primary source of women’s capital,” (1). Where once the sexualized representations of women in advertising portrayed them as passive, mute objects of the male gaze, “today women are presented as active, desiring sexual subjects who choose to present themselves in a seemingly objectified manner because it suits their interests to do so,” (1). An important aspect of the preoccupation

Present day advertising targeted at the midriffs suggests that buying the product will empower you. “This is part of a broader shift in which products are sold to women with the promise of confidence and self-esteem: because you’re worth it,” (1). Yet what is really being offered in these advertisements is a specific kind of power, the sexual power to entice and attract men by women represented as strong and playful rather than passive or victimized. The midriffs, with their “have it all” portrayals, create a vision of what it is to be female and feminine while leaving out a majority of the gender. “Including anyone living outside the heterosexual norm…it is also profoundly racialized,” (1). Contemporary advertising run within a heteronormative economy in which power and pleasure are presented in relation to heterosexual relationships. While women of color and their bodies are presented sexually in advertising, it is a sharp contrast from the active, knowing, desiring midriff figure that is overwhelmingly white. Others excluded from the empowering, pleasurable address are fat women, disabled women, old women and any woman who is unable to live up to the unrealistic narrow “ideal” of female beauty and sex appeal required. The cultural meaning conveyed is that of sexual attractiveness as the importance to women’s existence, and only then can she reach her potential and truly “have it