For as long as advertisements have been around, advertisers have been manipulating consumers into purchasing their products without their knowledge. Steve Craig sheds light on the underlying motives and agendas behind ads in “Men’s Men and Women’s Women”. Living in a patriarchal society makes women victim to strict beauty standards that can seemingly only be cured with the advertisers’ products. Due to women’s vulnerability against their appearance, advertisers prey on their insecurities to increase their sales. Protein World and Sensa advertise products that strike women's biggest insecurity: their weight. Steve Craig confirms in his article that women are compelled to purchase products that claim to increase their attractiveness. The two …show more content…
Craig explains women must be beautiful if they want to, “maintain her husband’s interest and maintain her family’s unity and security” (189). Men have expressed attraction to women who are fit and slender, and if a woman does not conform to these beauty standards she will face a life of loneliness. Women feel obligated to buy these weight loss supplements to fulfill men’s desires. Sensa and Protein World purposely used attractive women in their ads to evoke self-conscious thoughts from their audience. Craig reveals these advertisers successfully sell weight loss supplements because they elicit insecurity from their consumers, which companies prey on to drive their sales. Women fall victim to the advertisers’ trap because they believe they will finally be able to attain their dream body by purchasing these products. Through the portrayal of attractive women in ads, advertisers are able to manipulate women into purchasing their products with the promise of acquiring …show more content…
Sensa uses yellow to draw your eyes to the woman’s body. The bright measuring tape around her waist and yellow sports bra forces the viewer to focus on her toned body, eliciting envy from women. The woman’s yellow-blonde hair makes us pan up from her body to her face. She holds a huge grin demonstrating the joy and pride she has in her body. Women conclude they cannot be truly happy unless they are slim like the woman in the picture, reinforcing their need to purchase Sensa. Protein World’s use of yellow conveys the same message. The woman’s skin in the ad has been edited grey, the only source of color coming from her bright yellow bikini. Not only does yellow draw attention to her body, but also emphasizes the word beach in “beach body.” Yellow is associated with the sun and beach, and it implies women can only enjoy the ocean if they have a slim figure, further stressing the need to purchase Protein World. Overall the use of yellow exemplifies Craig’s argument that the desire to be attractive drives women to purchase
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
A vast majority of this ad is in black and white. The Psychology of Color says that black is a powerful color and with the black and white the producers are giving an authoritative tone to the woman. With no colors, the image is simplified, giving a wide range of ways it could be taken. There is only one hint of color in the ad, which can sometimes be indicated as the most important piece; the pink, the tribute to our femininity. Just like in Haley’s chosen ad in the [Re]Writing, this image is in black and white with pink writing. “By using the ‘girly’ colors that symbolize love and passion with the negativity associated statement, [the thunder thighs] it suggest that women should love their bodies,” Sarah Haley, page 108. Pink is a prime component of all Playtex ads, it is meant to salute our feminine side. With the new liners it is advertised that our tough, athletic side can also be praised, giving a best of both worlds kind of image. Even the box of this product is meant to stand out and promote our love with our bodies, with an emphasis in pink and yellow. Yellow is known to advance from surrounding colors and install optimism and energy, and pink is bright, sensual, and passionate. A wrap of all these colors, the black and white image, and the pink and yellow box and writing, it can be inferred that we should be happy with our
There is no denying that women are given high standards when it comes to their appearance. Advertisements make women look flawless and always perfectly groomed; no matter what she is captured doing in the advertisement. Skyy vodka, especially in their July 2010 Maxim magazine advertisement, is guilty of discriminating against woman. At a first glance upon this hypnotizing ad, the white, flawless, perfectly groomed female appears to be in a dress with a matching background. At a closer look, the girl with luscious locks of orange hair is simply lying naked in a bed, under what is safe to assume, her man or any man’s sheets. Male dominance in our society is still a major problem. Males either create or are exposed to advertisements
The advertisement's rich red coloring immediately strikes a viewer with exciting and salacious overtones. The red lettering, border, cigarette package, and swimsuit all emphasize social and physical pleasure. The other colors' absence only strengthens the red coloring's implications.
It guilt’s women and enforces unfair body expectations on them, while shaming those who cannot meet them. “Messages abound telling women that they are not good enough or beautiful enough, encouraging us to constantly change ourselves, often through the use of various products and practices.” [2] (Pg. 232) In this advertisement we
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...
Advertisers use women that are abnormally thin, and even airbrush them to make them appear thinner. These advertisers promote a body image that is completely unrealistic and impossible to achieve (Dohnt & Tiggemann, 2006b). It has been instilled in these advertisers’ minds that a thinner model will sell more (Hargreaves & Tiggemann, 2003). Media has a direc...
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.
In a brilliant update of the Killing Us Softly series, Jean Kilbourne explains the dangers of advertisements and how they objectify women. Advertisements intelligently portray women in a sexual and distorted way in order to attract the consumers’ attention. Media sets a standard on how young women view themselves and puts them at risk for developing an eating disorder. Kilbourne’s research has led her to educate those who have fallen victim to achieving the “ideal beauty” that has evolved in today’s society.
...r young, impressionable mind will have been exposed to more than 77,000 advertisements, according to an international study. Last week, it confirmed the link between the images of female perfection that dominate the media and increasing cases of low self-esteem among young women..” (Shields,2007). The propaganda techniques such as liking, sex appeal, and celebrity endorsements are used in advertisements constantly. Commercials on television, billboards, magazines, and various other advertisement types are everywhere you look in America, and sadly it has become very important for women of all ages to try to be perfect. We come into contact with these messages every day, and the beauty industry is getting bigger and bigger. Propaganda has molded our worldly perception of beauty and will only continue to hurt us and gain from our lack of self-esteem if we allow it to.
To sum up, it is often said that advertising is shaping women gender identity, and some have been argued that the statement is true, because of the higher amount of sexual references of women that advertisement show and the damages that occur on women’s personality and the public negative opinions of those women. As well, the negative effects that those kinds of advertisements cause to young generations and make them feel like they should simulate such things and are proud of what they are doing because famous actors are posting their pictures that way. Others deem this case as a personal freedom and absolutely unrelated to shaping women gender identity. On the contrast, they believe that, those sorts of advertisements are seriously teaching women how to stay healthy and be attractive, so they might have self-satisfaction after all.
Because of the past ideas of Lee?s Jeans being the "man?s jeans," the picture representation, along with the word usage, has to be powerful. This advertisement?s bland black and white coloring allows the audience to see right to the point the company is making. Using a lot of colors also shows that women do not need anything extra to make them strong. In the past, advertisements for women?s goods were usually very colorful. The colors were usually feminine pinks, purples, and yellows. Rather than using normal feminine colors, using black and white makes the advertisement stand for strength. The advertisement also shows a woman wearing Lee?s flare jeans and big boots. The company is sh...
The media favors one women's body type; the tall blonde with perfect, tan skin and long, beautiful hair. Because the images of women in advertisements are unattainable, it keeps them purchasing new products in their quest to be like the models they see (Moore). The actual women in these advertisements can't even match up to the
The first adverse effect of weight loss advertising is that it gives an illusion to women that being thin means beauty. The slimming companies recruit many beautiful celebrities to be the spokespersons. They post the photos before and after having treatment of those celebrities. Then, they made a comparison of those photos and exaggerated the beauty of after losing weight. In this case, women who are satisfied about their body initially may lose their confidence when comparing to those celebrities. They may find themselves imperfect and would consider the need of having those treatments. In fact, being thin is beautiful is partly correct only. It cannot apply to all females...
One of the campaigns that protein world did was named “Are you beach body ready”. It had premiered in London, UK and in New York City, US in the year 2015. This campaign advertisement encourages young woman to stay healthy and fit throughout life. The aim of this campaign is to raise self-conscious towards young woman on how a