Humans are undeniably trained and wired to judge others based on race, gender, and appearance. Unfortunately, women are stuck in all categories of judgments. Jean Kilbourne, an award-winning producer on documentaries about images of women in ads, explains that when media and advertisements exploit femininity for personal gain, women are at risk for much harm because it promotes objectification, which eventually will led to violence. An African American feminist, Joan Morgan, expresses her further disturbance about the constant sexism in rap lyrics that endorses violence and anger towards women. “’Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt’: Advertising and Violence,” by Jean Kilbourne and “From Fly-Girls to Bitches and Hos,” by Joan Morgan reveals compelling arguments about the ways society often portrays females as an inferior gender to males. Our society today still fearfully unable to view pass the femininity of a women causing females to endures the suffering from forceful gender roles to excessive expectations by the infliction of our society, families, and media.
Females are continuously objectifies by media in advertisement to be used as a tool for inappropriate sexual fantasy, which lead to violence towards women. Advertisements frequently utilize sex to show acts of power and hostility toward females of all ages (594). For the infamous Super Bowl Sunday commercials, companies like Pepsi Max and Snickers devalue females in their ads to appeal to consumers. For Pepsi Max commercial, the scene took place at a nice restaurant where a man and a beautiful woman is having a romantic date, while the woman in the commercial was wondering if her date was the one for her, all he could think about was his desire to sleep with her until ...
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...n? Our society does not seem to notice their offense towards women, which will still continues due to the carelessness people tend brush off their shoulder when facing the effects of cruel expectations for women.
From gender roles and expectations, females have suffers tremendously throughout all ages. There are numerous hardships and disadvantages females have to deal with in everyday life. Vicious judgments, discrimination, and objectification towards women demonstrate that our society has created a difficult world for women to live in. It is time for changes, a brake for all women to live life freely without worrying and suffering. The public views must acknowledge the struggles female endured and take the opportunity to look inside a woman’s world in order to prevent the torturing of all women from media, advertisements, families, and society’s judgments.
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.
According to Jeanne Kilbourne essay, Kilbourne talks about women being abused by men in visual advertisements and the consequences of those representations. I for one, argue with Kilbourne that women are being too exposed and hurt when they are in advertisements. So using Kilbourne 's analytical perspective and my own perspective we can give our insights on why we feel women are being treated badly and unequally from men with the following pictures. From the past till today women in advertisement pictures have been mostly victimized by men, and Kilbourne and I feel this sort of action needs to come to an end.
This then causes men to devalue not only women, but also the qualities the culture labels as feminine.
Kilbourne, Jean. “‘Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt’: Advertising and Violence.” From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A Text and Reader. 2nd ed. Eds. Stuart Green and April Lidinsky. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2012. 459-480. Print.
It is said that Western civilization had been primarily male dominated and as a result as diminished the feminine. Women’s roles in society have changed drastically over the past decades. While it took much time, progress for women’s rights has blossomed. Influences in civilization have affected view points of the commonly held mores, expectations, and stereotypes which define gender.
The documentary Killing Us Softly 4 discusses and examines the role of women in advertisements and the effects of the ads throughout history. The film begins by inspecting a variety of old ads. The speaker, Jean Kilbourne, then discusses and dissects each ad describing the messages of the advertisements and the subliminal meanings they evoke. The commercials from the past and now differ in some respects but they still suggest the same messages. These messages include but are not limited to the following: women are sexual objects, physical appearance is everything, and women are naturally inferior then men. Kilbourne discusses that because individuals are surrounded by media and advertisements everywhere they go, that these messages become real attitudes and mindsets in men and women. Women believe they must achieve a level of beauty similar to models they see in magazines and television commercials. On the other hand, men expect real women to have the same characteristics and look as beautiful as the women pictured in ads. However, even though women may diet and exercise, the reality...
Gender discrimination, that is a form of prejudice, is one of the dangerous global issues facing all societies nowadays. It is considered as a civil rights violation, especially to women. That is interpreted by traditional stereotypes of gender roles which are over-generalized ideas about a particular group of individuals. It leads to neglecting people’s differences and uniqueness and to having a certain image based on one opinion or belief. Stereotypes often give a certain generalized impression that is often not entirely true, especially about gender issues. No matter how developed a country
Common sense seems to dictate that commercials just advertise products. But in reality, advertising is a multi-headed beast that targets specific genders, races, ages, etc. In “Men’s Men & Women’s Women”, author Steve Craig focuses on one head of the beast: gender. Craig suggests that, “Advertisers . . . portray different images to men and women in order to exploit the different deep seated motivations and anxieties connected to gender identity.” In other words, advertisers manipulate consumers’ fantasies to sell their product. In this essay, I will be analyzing four different commercials that focuses on appealing to specific genders.
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.
Instead, women are being discriminated and treated as inferior due to the stereotypes that are portrayed in the media. The media creates and reproduces ways of seeing that at a minimum reflect and shape our culture. We can look at the media to understand more about a culture’s values and norms, if we realize the limitations of looking at the media. For example, one may ask, does the news based in the United Sates represent what the American culture is like, or only what stands out from everyday American culture? The answer to that is no. Instead, the media represents what it thinks it will be able to sell and is supported by advertisements. This includes violent acts, the sensationally and inappropriate. Jhally reminds us that “it is this male, heterosexual, pornographic imagination based on the degradation and control of women that has colonized commercial culture in general, although it is more clearly articulated in music videos” (Jhally 2007). Therefore, “media content is a symbolic rather than a literal representation of society and that to be represented in the media is in itself a form of power—social groups that are powerless can be relatively easily ignored, allowing the media to focus on the social groups that ‘really matter’” (Gerbner,
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.
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.
Common expectations seem to indicate gender roles on every individual. The males will play their part in being masculine while the females act an as object. There are several ways one can see how gender roles are played. A way is through hip-hop and rap music in the black community. Joan Morgan, an African American feminist and hip-hop and rap music fan, shows us how gender roles are being played in her community through music. Since Morgan is a feminist, she voices her opinion on the way black men treat black women in her article, “From Fly-Girls to Bitches and Hos.” Morgan states her argument that black men write lyrics ranting about black women to give a self-reflection. The males feel oppressed and express it through music. There are many reasons a male can feel oppressed, whereas one reason is becoming masculine. Michael Kimmel, a sociologist professor at Stony Brook University and the author of “‘Bros Before Hos’: The Guy Code” states that guys tries their best to show that they are manly. To clarify on how the men portray their oppression is to sing of misogyny and self-hatred in disguised hatred toward women. Men expressing their oppression through music tie the guy code of acting masculine and Morgan’s view of men feeling oppressed. Morgan describes black men express their oppression by objectifying black women sexually in music. Jean Kilbourne, the author of “‘Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt’: Advertising and Violence” and an activist on advertisement based on public health problems and violence against women agrees with Morgan on women being sexually identified. Kilbourne and Morgan connect to Kimmel by showing how males are seen to be masculine and females are soft and emotional. Morgan’s claims, in “From Fly-Girls to Bi...
With so much exposure to this type of media, it is easy to become desensitised to it. With America becoming numb to the violence in these advertising tactics, domestic violence is an increasing problem as brutality against women has become trivialized. Jean Kilbourne 's “‘Two Ways a Woman can get Hurt”: Advertising and Violence’ argues that violence in advertising profoundly affects people in a skewed physiological manner, leading to violence against women. Kilbourne insists that “...violent images contributes to the state of terror...” felt by women who feel victimized by men who “...objectify and are disconnected...” from the women they mistreat (431). She furthers her argument by dictating that “....turning a human being into…an object, is almost always the first step towards justifying violence against that person” (431). So much of the media that America consumes is centered on dehumanizing women into an object of male enjoyment. It is difficult to have empathy toward a material object. Because of this objectification, men feel less guilty when enacting brutality upon women. Violence becomes downplayed because it is seen everywhere - in advertising and media - and this has contributed significantly to the cases of domestic violence in America. America has become numb to violence against women in advertising, leading to an alarming increasing domestic violence in this