Women – beautiful, strong matriarchal forces that drive and define a portion of the society in which we live – are poised and confident individuals who embody the essence of determination, ambition, beauty, and character. Incomprehensible and extraordinary, women are persons who possess an immense amount of depth, culture, and sophistication. Society’s incapability of understanding the frame of mind and diversity that exists within the female population has created a need to condemn the method in which women think and feel, therefore causing the rise of “male-over-female” domination – sexism. Sexism is society’s most common form of discrimination; the need to have gender based separation reveals our culture’s reluctance to embrace new ideas, people, and concepts. This is common in various aspects of human life – jobs, households, sports, and the most widespread – the media. In the media, sexism is revealed through the various submissive, sometimes foolish, and powerless roles played by female models; because of these roles women have become overlooked, ignored, disregarded – easy to look at, but so hard to see. 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... ... middle of paper ... ...l 2015. http://www.dove.us/real_beauty/news.asp?id=566. 2) Georgia Institute of Technology. Carnal Commandments: Consumed with Consumption. Web 28 April 2015. http://iron.lcc.gatech.edu/~gtg997h/Carnal.html 3) Joshi, S.T. In Her Place: A Documentary History of Prejudice against Women. Amherst: Prometheus Books. 2006. 4) Kilbourne, Jean. Killing Us Softly 3: Advertising’s Image of Women. Dir. Sut Jhally. DVD. Media Education Foundation, 2000. 5) Lumby, Catherine. Bad Girls: The Media, Sex & Feminism in the 90s. Australia: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd. 1997. 6) Thilk, Chris. Sexy women don’t help sell to women. Web 28 April 2015. http://www.adjab.com/2006/09/08/sexy-women-dont-help-sell-to-women. 7) Wanless, Mary Wanless. "Barbie's Body Images." Feminist Media Studies 1.1 (2001): 125-127. Communication & Mass Media Complete. EBSCO. Web. 18 Apr. 2015.
Often in advertising, there are images of women that offend some people, who see them as degrading, while others think they are harmless. However, upon a closer examination of the facts we will find that it is truly demeaning and not just a situation propelled out of proportion by ultra-feminists or what some people term “femi-nazis.” Although it is a feminist issue, it is also a family issue. Everyone has a sister, a mother, a grandmother or female friend who could potentially be harmed by being objectified in these ads. This can incite violence against a woman, damaging the woman as well as her family or friends. In Jean Kilbourne’s “Killing us Softly 3,” Kilbourne advances the idea that the advertising industry makes “. . . deliberate choices,” and “. . . tactical decisions designed to sell their particular brands by selling particular brands of femininity . . . undermining the way girls and women see themselves, while normalizing the violence done to them by men” (mef pp 3). Nevertheless, why do people, including women, still till tend to buy from the stores/retailers who advertise in this fashion? As we attempt to answer this question we will look at the biases created by these ads, and their affect on the people who are looking at them. With this evaluation, we shall discover that it is not just feminists over-reacting, but an issue for all humanity with ramifications for women’s rights, health and safety for years to come.
Jean Kilbourne’s 2010 documentary, Killing Us Softly 4, discusses the idea that the businesses of advertising and commercialism have promoted specific body ideals for women in our modern day society by the methods in which they market towards their target audiences, specifically how women are portrayed in their ads. Throughout the documentary, Kilbourne is extremely critical of the advertising industry, accusing it of misconduct. She argues that objectification and superficial, unreal portrayal of women in these advertisements consequently lower women’s self-esteem. Ordinarily, women have many industries that try to gear their products towards them with apparel, beauty, and toiletries being amongst the most prominent. The majority of advertisements
Our world has progressed an enormous amount in the past few centuries. And even today, in our modern era, we are bigger and smarter, but our thinking has not changed. Women have been restricted from many opportunitIes in the past. We as women are still being criticised and objectified, which is disgraceful and sickening because we are constantly told “close your legs when you sit” or “don’t do that it’s not lady-like”. This is portrayed in advertising that basically makes a mockery of our freedom. And we ask ourselves, where did the idea of sexism and gender inequality emerge from? Religion. It is the root of sexism and gender inequality which has been practiced for over two thousand years. It is presented through the use of advertising,
The article, “Two Ways to Hurt a Women: Advertising and Violence” is written by Jean Kilbourne, who is an award-winning author and educator. Kilbourne is best known for her works about the portrayal of women in advertisements. Throughout the article, Kilbourne explains how advertisement objectifies and dehumanizes women and indirectly led to create a culture of violence towards women. The purpose of Kilbourne’s article was to educate and bring awareness behind the “double meaning” of these ads that are meant to be degrading towards women. The audience for this article is both men and women. While ads do target and encourage men to be dominant over women, Kilbourne aims to bring awareness to both genders of the harm such advertisements are causing
The basic strategy of this kind of gender stereotypes is men will ignore the advertisements by paying more attention on woman if the advertiser includes woman’s image, and if they use male photograph in advertisement it will attract more female consumers. Therefore, people will pay more attention on advertisement and then have more possibility to shape positive attitude of that product, or at least, bear that product in mind when they need to consume it (Courtney and Whipple, 1983, p.74). Moreover, it is not only a strategy to attract more consumers, more importantly; it is a method to stand out in a “male-dominated work environment in advertising”, and it challenges the value of patriarchy and “double sex standards” (Fedorenko, 2015, p.476). However, sexy female image are often controversially critique as gender stereotypes of women in advertising. According to Laura Mulvey’s idea of “male gaze”, it points out that female are sexual objects to men to please them in an “erotic spectacle” (1992, cited in Marcellus, 2009). In Sonata’s ad, this woman dresses sexy in order to be a sexual reward, a tool to attract men and accessory of a successful man. This expression of women object to the idea of feminism that has mentioned before, women is independent, and the reason for being sexy and glamour is not to please men and fulfil male’s desire of sex. So, this advertisement provides a negative feeling for women that reinforce the gender stereotypes of women looks sexy in order to satisfy male’s desire of
Everything is seen to be perfect in the advertisement world. Society should be perfect. There is happiness and beautiful people. The truth is disguised.
...der stereotyping in advertising, the affects are still a big problem. Media images of women have had a big part in contributing to women’s “second-class status in society” . The media has limited their contribution to both wider issues like democratic discussions and their roles in their personal lives. Although there have been distinctions made between sex and gender, the media is responsible in part for putting men and women into separate gender roles based on their sex . Women have been culturally conditioned to be the weaker, submissive sex and the use of stereotyping women in advertisements has validated those gender roles within society. And although these stereotypes are conditioned from more than just the media, changing the way women are portrayed in magazine advertisements could potentially make a big difference in the way women are viewed in society.
Advertisements are everywhere in the modern world. They are present in magazines, on billboards, and on television. They dominate the media and, for this reason, have significant influence on consumers. One example is an advertisement by the Macy’s department store. The advertisement is for a perfume called Animale. It has a vibrant green background and shows the perfume bottle in the lower left-hand corner; however, the bottle and perfume name only take up a small part of the image. Most of the advertisement is dominated by a photograph of a woman. The woman pictured is black, and her eyes have been colored to match the green background. Her eyes stare directly at the viewer and are accentuated by the makeup and paint covering her face. Because
Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are used Against Women . New York: Doubleday, 1991. 9-19, 179-217.
The topic of gender is always a heart-wrenching debacle, but when authors like Kilbourne and Kimmel displays the topics, it shows they are fully aware of the audience, matching it with the correct purpose and stance. They know which types of appeals are most appropriate for captivating the audience’s attention as well. All these elements combined together create an article that surely compels the reader to think twice about women in ads, or regular men, hiding their emotions.
As time evolves, media has become more prevalent. It has been designed to shape and influence the perceptions of the viewers. Women’s participation in media began much later than men, who initially played the primary character. Even so, women’s roles have greatly been domesticated by popular culture, especially in advertisements. They have varied from cooks, maids, and as of the late 60’s, women have been exploited in the marketing world as sexual objects to sell products, which raised a cause for concern of the portrayal of women in media (Shrikhande, 1). However, even since the 60’s until now, the objectification of women in media has not simmered down, but gradually increased. A good example of this is the Carl’s Jr’s advertisement for Super
In this selection by author, Jean Kilbourne the constant escalation in the media advertisements is displayed. She begins the text by explaining the vast blanket that sexualized ads now cover. Kilbourne states that this incredibly out-of-control practice “dehumanizes and objectifies people” (456). She presents the idea that these dangerous ads are so commonplace that it creates a toxic environment in which we base our judgements on staged, indecent ads.
When it comes to gender and advertising, there are very few products that are unisex. There are often male and female deodorants, clothing, shoes, hair products and that’s only to name a few. According to course content companies use gender as a marketing strategy called positioning (Unit 2, Part I, Marketing Strategies). They use this strategy to determine which gender group is more likely to buy their product and from there they will be able to target this group with the use of certain colors, words and photos based on gender. The advertisement that was chosen for this assignment represents the female gender due to the company that it represents. Aerie is a well known women’s clothing store that is popular for its lingerie and lounge wear. The aerie brand does not offer men’s apparel therefore their target audience is women.
When beginning my search for TV advertisements that feature women, I had little to no trouble finding commercials that displayed female-empowering messages. It’s evident today that there are numerous companies and brands jumping on board to using feminism in order to help sell products and gain attraction towards their products. We can see throughout the years of advertising and television commercials that feminism has grown increasingly popular to use as a means of activism. Although companies don’t have to do this, it’s clear that they want to. But the question is, are these companies genuinely interested in feminism or are they just doing it for the profit? The article “Faux Activism in Recent Female-Empowering Advertising” by Alyssa Baxter
women don't have to ask their husband for money to go out and buy food