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Objectifying Women in Advertising
Female objectification in advertising examples
Female objectification in advertising examples
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Sex Sells
The desire to be desired. High end fashion advertisements are known primarily for their jaw-dropping qualities! Constantly on the verge of crossing the line and being considered culturally unacceptable, these ads individually signify a common message and appeal to young women. They are promoting sexuality and making their image a desirable part of the readers identity. Due to their costly price tags, these advertisements are marketing only to a select few, the elite class, but the identity displayed in the image portrayed is marketed to a large amount of consumers. High-end fashion companies should refrain from demonstrating a false illusion of the elite class that they display through sexuality because they are generating a fictional fantasy of the superior class and an identity crisis for young women.
This is what many young women fantasize about and this is the reason advertisements for high-end fashion companies, such as this Calvin Klein Ad, demonstrate in their campaigns. The Calvin Klein Ad pictures young woman, lying topless by the ocean on volcanic rocks. Her breasts are covered by the arm of a shirtless young man who is lying behind her. Their body language displays strong sexual desire for one another. The young woman has her eyes shut while illuminating an orgasmic facial expression, whereas the young man’s eyes make direct contact with the reader. The rocks that they are lying atop of are very dark and provide a dark contrast with the woman’s vibrantly yellow jeans, which immediately catch the eye. With this focus being obtained, it would be hard to not notice her perfectly bronzed, toned abdomen, attracting a particular amount of attention with the display of her ever so desirable hip bones. Th...
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... They continuously attempt to shock society by printing provocative, controversial and borderline culturally unacceptable ads. Adverts convey a central signified concept of sexuality. They do this by demonstrating women as sex objects, appealing to all variations of young women. Whether fulfilling an individual’s want to be desired, allowing the reader to escape by creating a temporary sexually alluding false identity, or fulfilling the fantasy of a woman’s want to be overpowered by a man, adverts are utilizing the shocking advertisements to subconsciously implicit a strong, controversial, message to consumers.
Work Cited
Calvin Klein Jeans. Advertisement. Vogue. Sept. 2012. Popofstyle. April 13, 2014. Print
Guess. Advertisement. Vanity Fair. April 2014: 24. Print
Dolce and Gabbana. Advertisement. Vogue. Jan. 2008. Pintrest. April 13, 2014. Print
This thought has been held on for far too long. In a consumer-driven society, advertisements invade the minds of every person who owns any piece of technology that can connect to the internet. Killbourne observes that “sex in advertising is pornographic because it dehumanizes and objectifies people, especially women,” (271). Advertising takes the societal ideology of women and stereotypes most kids grow up learning and play on the nerves of everyone trying to evoke a reaction out of potential customers, one that results in them buying products.
In “Beauty… and the Beast of Advertising” Jean Kilbourne argues that advertisements sell a lot more than just their products: “They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth, love and sexuality, popularity and normalcy” (1). Kilbourne states that in advertising there are two types of women, “Housewives” and “Sex objects”. Kilbourne calls the sexually objectified women “a mannequin, a shell” because their beauty is flawless, they lacks all of the imperfections that make people appear human (2). Kilbourne also states that these women are all skinny, often tall and “long-legged”, and youthful (2). She claims that all “beautiful” women in ads obey this “norm” (Kilbourne 2). Kilbourne strongly states that advertisements lack the sense
Other aspects strengthen the advertisement design's sexual appeal. The foreground woman's strapless swimming suit, highlighted in red, is the most notable example. Her chest prominently resides above horizontal boxes in both th...
The world we are living is a fast paced ruled by the media. We are surrounded by images of, perfect bodies, beautiful hair, flawless skin, and ageless faces that flash at us every day. These images are constantly in our minds throughout our lives. Advertisements select audience openly and target them with their product. The advertisement is implied in order to be like the people in the advertisements you must use their product. This approach is not new to this generation, but widely used today. The advertisements grab people attention and persuade them with the appearance of beauty and happy women that looks sophisticated to people eyes.
We see the ways that the popular media uses gender tensions everywhere. The truth is that sex sells, we know that. The challenge that advertisers face is: How to use it best. Some advertisers do this better than others and the ones that truly have an understanding of gender tensions will, in the end, sell the most. In my last paper, I explored how the company Abercrombie and Fitch uses gender tensions to sell their clothes. They have become among the masters in advertising and the business in booming. They cater to young adults and young adults only for one powerful reason: It is at this age in which the sexual tensions between male and female are greatest. Abercrombie and Fitch has found their niche.
“Sex sells” has been used as an excuse to exploit and humiliate women through advertising for years. It is seen everywhere: television, movies, magazines, billboards, literally any place that can have an advertisement put in/on it. One company that specializes in advertisements composed of sexualizing women in order to sell their clothes is American Apparel. For years, they have created degrading ads that make the average believe they need to look like these images in order to feel good about themselves. Advertisements like these have a negative effect on society and especially women but American Apparel has taken things to a whole new level of exploitation.
Sex is one of the most controversial and enticing subjects in today’s media. No wonder it has become a dominant marketing strategy, it appeals to a basic human interest in sex and uses it to persuade an audience. Sex, as a marketing tool, has become extremely pervasive in the United States today. An individual living in America will certainly be exposed to this marketing tool. Music industries, television commercials, magazines and other advertising media have given in to this marketing technique. The fact that companies use people’s natural interest in sex to sell their products is upsetting. The way advertisers use sex appeal to sell their products reflects poorly on and undermines our society’s morals.
Steele’s Constructing Sex, the Sexual, and the Erotic- 'Doing It’: The Social Construction of S-E-X, which covers the social construction and perception of sex, sexuality, pleasure, and gender. In the text Steele mentions that very often in this society, penial penetration and male pleasure and climax are commonly seen as indicator of having had sex (Steele). The focus on male pleasure above females is not only relevant to the physical act of sex, but also the perception of gender and the way media targets their audience. More often than not, the typical objects of male pleasure (females) are taken and added into media and advertising to appeal to male pleasure even in ads that the products are targeted away from men. For example, underwear made for females often features an ‘attractive’ female seductively showing off the garments, effective for targeting straight males. Even in commercials for products for either gender like burgers or sunscreen, still use an objectified women as their selling point. Another point that Steele looks at in the text is the idea of consent, Steele states that “The dangers inherent in contemporary constructions of S-E-X… is about the pleasure of the actor” which can cause the dismissal of the object of desire as irrelevant (Steele). This idea of the focus being solely on the actor is problematic as it can easily perpetuate rape culture, and is a large part of the RadioShack ad.
Jean Kilbourne’s “Two Way a Woman Can Get Hurt: Advertising and Violence” is a section of a book titled: “Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising” that was originally published in 1999. It is about the images of women that advertisements illustrate. The central claim or thesis of the document is that: “advertising helps to create a climate in which certain attitudes and values flourish and it plays a role in shaping people’s ideas” (paraphrase). The author wants people by all genders and young children to acknowledge a right attitude towards what is shown in the advertisements so that the standards of behavior will not be influenced. As a result, it enables the negative contribution from the advertisements to be limited or eliminated.
Wallerstein, K (1998) Thinness and Other Refusals in Contemporary Fashion Advertisements in Fashion Theory, Volume 2, Issue 2, pp.129–150. London: Berg. Williamson, J. (1978). Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. London: Marion Boyars.
Sex is everywhere in our society. It is on TV, magazines, radio, billboards, and basically anywhere you look today. People cannot get away from sex in advertising because so many companies use it. Sex appeals are used in advertising all the time, and people love to look at it because 'Sometimes people listen better with their eyes' (Steel 137). Sex in advertising is an effective technique that is used today. It helps companies successfully sell their product in our market. Of course it has to be directed at the right audience, and sold at the right places in order for it to work.
The portrayals of men in advertising began shifting towards a focus on sexual appeal in the 1980s, which is around the same that women in advertising were making this shift as well. According to Amy-Chinn, advertisements from 1985 conveyed the message that “men no longer just looked, they were also to be looked at” as seen in advertisements with men who were stripped down to their briefs (2). Additionally, advertisements like these were influencing society to view the male body “as an objectified commodity” (Mager and Helgeson 240). This shows how advertisements made an impact on societal views towards gender roles by portraying men as sex objects, similarly to women. By showcasing men and women in little clothing and provocative poses, advertisements influenced society to perceive men and women with more sexual
The objectification of women is a huge issue in society and is often led by advertising. However, many men still believe that the adverts depicting women in a sexual and often passive posture are not very offensive, but rather very funny or sexy. However, how would they feel if it were their daughter or sister being advertised throughout the world as a sexual object? The Tiger Beer advertisement shown in the appendix is a clear example of the objectification of women in advertising. The Tiger Beer advert was made to appeal to men from the age of 20 to 60.
In many clothing advertisements, particularly jeans and lingerie ads, women are used as the main subjects to entice the viewer to notice the ad and most importantly, be excited about the product. In one photo, Calvin Klein Jeans promotes its clothing through what seems to be unwilling, reluctant sexual activity – rape. The advertisement displays the woman resisting the man with the palm of her right hand, and she is pulling her shirt down to cover her stomach with her left hand; yet he is still pursuing her and attempting to remove her top. Her body language and gaze – devoid of emotion – reveal that she is not interes...
The absence of clothing has become omnipresent in today’s advertising. Some ads focus on the removal of clothing, while others focus on no clothing at all. This idea is ever-present in fragrance advertising, as it forces the viewer to focus on the product over the appearance of one’s clothing. The absence of clothing creates a very specific mood for the ad: sex. The ad is able to portray a meaning that is not even included in the ad just by removing pieces of clothing. Fragrance advertising, such as Gucci Guilty, uses sex as a tool to sell a product without knowing anything about it.