Sex and Gender Stereotypes in Advertisements

899 Words2 Pages

Definition of the Situation This paper identifies the ethical issues of how both men and women are portrayed in advertising, and argues that ads can be successful in generating sales without portraying women as objects, and without perpetuating that men must be masculine. Advertising is pervasive, repetitive and professionally developed to improve the probabilities of attention, comprehension, retention and behavioral impact. The purpose of advertising is generally to inform targeted consumer groups of the availability and description of products and services, and to persuade consumers to buy them. (Cohan, 2001) The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is the main federal agency that enforces advertising laws and regulations. According to the FTC, advertising must tell the truth and not mislead consumers. Besides this law there was are no rules about how women or men should or shouldn’t be portrayed in advertisements. Advertising companies continue to produce sexist advertisements because of supply and demand. People continue to buy magazines, watch t.v, movie, and music video’s that degrade both men and women. Stakeholders Internal stakeholders that may be affected by sexism in advertising include, employees, and investors. Employees may not have a choice of what is published and this could make them look bad among their peers. The CEO of the business may be affected by sexism in advertising because if the public does not like the image that the business is representing than this can affect sales and stocks which affects investors. External stakeholders that are affected in some way from the decisions of the business include customers, suppliers, community, trade unions, and the government. Customers may chose not to purchase ... ... middle of paper ... ...his standard and, at the same time, women feel frustrated because the standard seems unattainable once they pause to think about it. Still, they will associate the product with this desire and go out and buy it. There is a certain flawlessness depicted in models with impossible youth, impossible perfection – accomplished with professional makeup, hair, and photo retouches. Some images depict women of such perfection that they seem inhuman. Studies show that men exposed to a menu of ads which depict women as sex objects are more accepting of interpersonal violence, primarily against women, than are men exposed to other types of ads. This shows there is some statistically meaningful correlation which links the depicting of women as things, in advertising, to violence towards women. Violence stems from the perception of possess-ability, that is, the desire to control.

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