In the article, ’Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt’: Advertising and Violence” by Jean Kilbourne discusses how advertising has negatively affected women in our society today. Kilbourne uses multiple examples of advertisements through the picture in the book that objectified as well as demoralizes women. An example of this is on a picture of a cartoon male holding a gun to a cartoon female's head (Kilbourne 466). Ironically the brand this advertisement is promoting is “bitch skateboards” and Kilbourne goes in depth by using statistics to show how this ad might affect our society and state in the text that “violence is a leading cause of female injury in almost every country in the world...” (Kilbourne 466). Kilbourne backs up her claim as …show more content…
Let us look at the commercial for Go Daddy called “Perfect Match” which debuted for the 2013 Super Bowl. The commercial is simple since it is only 3 people who are in a room for the entire commercial. The commentator introduces a product which can promote your sexy business in a smart way. In the room, a supermodel and a nerd named Walter are sitting in a chair. After the introduction, the two demonstrate how sexy meets smart by kissing each other, thus making any audience feel uncomfortable. After the kiss, the commercial ends with the tagline “When sexy meets smart, your small business scores” (Effron 1). The message in the commercial and tagline provides the audience with the ethos, pathos, and logos and a call for the consumer to take action. The message clearly personifies the beautiful meeting the smart creating an emotional appeal to the audience on why to use GoDaddy. So what is behind the logos of this commercial? Impeccably the commercial relates to the logic to the audience that if a business is more sexy and make your business more effective by reaching out the audience by creating a website using GoDaddy. The question to the consumer then becomes will Go Daddy actually make our business more effective? The commercial demonstrates to the audience ethos, making them aware how sex appeal is important and by using Go Daddy their business could go to the next level. The message entices the consumer to consider the success of comparing a smart man and his ability to land a kiss from a supermodel to the success of your business. The appeal of logos by personifying your business as sexy encourages consumers to utilize the web through a smart tool such as GoDaddy. Is there really ethos in the commercial? Of course, the GoDaddy message is used to persuade the audience on whether you are
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.
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.
Advertisements are all over the place. Whether they are on TV, radio, or in a magazine, there is no way that you can escape them. They all have their target audience who they have specifically designed the ad for. And of course they are selling their product. This is a multi billion dollar industry and the advertiser’s study all the ways that they can attract the person’s attention. One way that is used the most and is in some ways very controversial is use of sex to sell products. For me to analyze this advertisement I used the rhetorical triangle, as well as ethos, pathos, and logos.
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...
George Orwell, author of “1984,” portrays a dystopian nation concentrated on despair to warn his readers of Communist governments. Michael Radford, director and screen writer, film adaptation of the fiction story successfully captures the cinematography Orwell portrayed to the reader throughout the three sections of his novel. The industry influence commercialized minuscule topics like sexual affairs to increase the number of viewers and lessens the true horrors illustrated by Orwell.
Open up any magazine and you will see the objectification of women. The female body is exploited by advertising, to make money for companies that sell not just a product, but a lifestyle to consumers. Advertisements with scantily clothed women, in sexualized positions, all objectify women in a sexual manner. Headless women, for example, make it easy to see them as only a body by erasing the individuality communicated through faces, eyes, and eye contact. Interchangeability is an advertising theme that reinforces the idea that women, like objects, are replaceable.
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.
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.
There are many companies that use sex appeal in their ads today. For instance Victoria Secrets is one of the top sellers in lingerie. They show skin in every one of their ads. All of their models put on the sex appeal for all commercials and magazines. That is what helps them sell. Women look at those ads and see those girls floating on clouds like angels and feel they could feel the same if they wore that purple bra or red underwear. By showing these girls constantly looking sexy in their ads make women feel sexy just wearing them. That is the whole point of using sex in your ads. It?s amazing what a little skin can do. "In advertising, sex sells. But only if you're selling sex (Richards).
Advertising in American culture has taken on the very interesting character of representing our culture as a whole. Take this Calvin Klein ad for example. It shows the sexualization of not only the Calvin Klein clothing, but the female gender overall. It displays the socially constructed body, or the ideal body for women and girls in America. Using celebrities in the upper class to sell clothing, this advertisement makes owning a product an indication of your class in the American class system. In addition to this, feminism, and how that impacts potential consumer’s perception of the product, is also implicated. Advertisements are powerful things that can convey specific messages without using words or printed text, and can be conveyed in the split-second that it takes to see the image. In this way, the public underestimates how much they are influenced by what they see on television, in magazines, or online.
Objectification of the female body has long plagued advertisements for products ranging from perfume to fast food, in which advertisers depict women in a sexual light, marketed towards appealing to the male gaze. While the passivity of this sexualized female role has recently shifted to accommodate more “active, desiring sexual subjects” (Gill 255), women who are “powerful and playful, rather than passive and victimized” (Gill 258), it is still remarkable to note how “the continued history and presence of women in decorative and sexual roles have generated much interest and controversy than similar portrayals of men” (Sheehan 101). Freeman and Merskin point out in “Having It His Way: The Construction of Masculinity in Fast-Food TV Advertising” that fast food commercials sometimes depict meat as synonymous with female flesh, both being “mutual objects of male desire” (Freeman and Merskin 470) and “objects of the camera’s implied heterosexual male gaze” (Freeman and Merskin 470). The issues presented within these representations of women are that they are unrealistic in strengthening the concept of power imbalances between the sexes and in reinforcing standards of beauty and fitness that are not easily attainable. By presenting the genders with an array of limits as such, the sexualization and normalization of “inequality, domination, and even violence” (Caputi 312) occur, allowing advertising to influence adolescents much like propaganda does, by “[reinforcing] or [modifying] the attitudes or behavior” (Portia 42) of its target groups to form uniform masses of consumers, ultimately disregarding any differences that make every individual unique, and encouraging its demographics to do the
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. The advert seeks to get a cheap laugh from the target audience with the image of the woman in a sexual pose and the picture of the beer. The ad promotes the idea that beer is the most desirable thing in the ‘Far East’ and that beer is much more important than women. It also openly laughs at the South East Asian sex trade by putting a prostitute in the middle of the ad. The ad also implies that women in the ‘Far East’ are only good for sex (dressing in revealing, sexual clothes designed to make the woman in the ad seem more desirable).
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
The average American is exposed to hundreds of advertisements per day. Advertisements targeted toward females have an enormous effect on women's thoughts, attitudes, perceptions, and actions. Most of the time, women don't even realize these advertisements are formulating self-image issues. These ideals surround them daily and they become naturalized to the ads. Advertising creates an entire worldview persuading women to emulate the images they see all around them. In order to create a market for their products, companies constantly prey upon women's self esteem, to feel like they aren't good enough just the way they are. This makes women constantly feel stressed out about their appearance (Moore). Advertising has a negative effect on women's body image, health, and self-esteem.
There are a lots and lots of advertises that contains a bit of exaggeration, sex and a message to make the consumer feel an association going on by using or buying that product. For example, Coors light beer commercial contains a lot of stuff that might get people to feel an association going on if he or she drinks that Coors light beer. On one of the Coors light beer commercial, there's a commercial that shows couple of young man and woman drinking Coors light beer and playing volleyball up on the Rocky mountains. A lot of people especially the people around their 20's would be convinced that if he or she drinks Coors light beer, then they could enjoy the coolness of being young and active. Since the commercial contains both sex, it would refer to the people aroun...