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portrayal of male and female in advertising
portrayal of male and female in advertising
portrayal of male and female in advertising
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For this assignment, I would like to take a closer look at alcohol advertisements. Working in the bar industry, I see many alcohol ads a day that promote and try to sell their product to their target audiences. According to results from the 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, people between the ages of 21 to 25 years old drink more than any other age group (Aldworth 32). At this age, my peers and I are a large portion of the target audience for alcohol companies. For most of our lives we have heard that college is the time to live it up and party. The Federal Trade Commision claims that underage groups have a high exposure to alcohol advertising (1999). Another study conducted found that 1.2 alcohol commercials were found per hour during college sports programming (Grube 54). Think about the last time you saw an ad for alcohol. What did it look like? What or who was the focus of the ad? How did it make you feel? What message was being sent to you? Many print advertisements promoting alcohol use sex to sell their product. I challenge you to search “Alcohol ads” in Google Images and see just how many of those print ads contain some sort of sexual aspect. Whether it is a partially naked, thin, and busty woman, or a woman placed between a man’s legs, or an image of a woman who looks as though she is undressing, sex is everywhere in alcohol advertisements. It has become so prominent that sex in alcohol ads increased by 12% between 1983 and 2003 (Reichert, Childers, and Reid 1).
Skyy Vodka, for example, has been the center of many sexy alcohol ad controversies. One ad depicts a slim, tan, very busty white woman, lying down between the legs of a man in a tux standing over her holding a bottle of Skyy Vodka and two martini gla...
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...iew of Content, Effects, and Functions of Sexual Information in Consumer Advertising.” Ebscohost Publishing (2003): 241-273. Ebscohost Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 March. 2014
Reichert, Tom, Courtney Carpenter Childers, Leonard Hall. “How Sex in Advertising Varies by Product Category: An Analysis of Three Decades of Visual Sexual Imagery in Magazine Advertising” Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising 33 (2012): 1-19. Print.
Reichert, Tom, Ignatius Fosu. “Women’s Responses to Sex in Advertising: Examining the Effect of Women’s Sexual Self-Schema on Responses to Sexual Content in Commercials.” Journal of Promotion Management 11 (2005): 143-153. Ebscohost Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 March. 2014
Sturken, Marita, Lisa Cartwright. “Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture.” New York, New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2009. 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.
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...
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.
“Selling sex is illegal, but using it to promote economic growth is not.” (Sexualization and Sexploitation of Women in the Media; Rosery Films) What actually happened to our culture, people wondered? Has advertising gone too far? And are we being corrupted by sex? According Sex in advertising: Perspectives on the Erotic Appeal, in 2005, approximately one-fifth of all advertising used overt sexual content to sell its product. Society’s interest with sex and the advertising designer’s acceptance of it as an effective tool have served each other for the course of the twentieth century. And has always been separated on the extents to which sexuality can and should be used to sell. Advertising has become the single largest source of visual imagery in our social society. No matter where we look, we see advertisements trying to sell us things. Provocative advertising has been characterized as a deliberate attempt to gain attention through shock. (De Pelsmacker & Van Den Bergh, 1996) In 2007, The American Psychological Association sent out a press release to the media stressing the harmful effects of sexualizing our youth: “The proliferation of sexualized images of girls and young women in advertising, merchandisin...
We may think of sex as a passionate way of showing one’s life-long partner one’s love, or as a means of satisfying oneself, but in the recent years we have grown accustomed to the idea of casual sex becoming the norm. As a result, the once scandalous sexualized ads of the early and mid-1900s have become so common that Kilbourne claims that these ads contribute to our current rape culture and to the objectification of women and children.
Alcoholics that are trapped so deep in the spell of alcoholism are leaving a legacy behind for those who continue to make alcohol companies millions of dollars by ruining their lives, making the wrong investment every time they purchase a bottle of alcohol; to them an “alternative route” to mask any issues they might be encountering at a particular time in their lives, and to those alcohol-making companies they are walking fortunes—walking billboards. Advertisement ads for these products continue targeting not only the already alcoholics, but also targeting underage drinkers. These alcohol-making companies can argue differently and have sworn to not be so focused on targeting people under 21. “Alcohol advertisers have pledged to comply with self-regulatory codes designed to limit t...
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.
“Sex sells” is an aphorism closely adhered to by both the film and print advertising industries. For over a century, magazines, newspapers, film, and other advertising mediums have utilized women and sexuality to persuasively market their products to consumers (Reichert, 2003). By representing an assortment of consumer products surrounded by women who exemplify a “desired” body type, marketing specialists quickly discovered the direct correlation between sexuality and consumer buying. So why is using beauty and sexuality as a marketing gimmick so harmful? With women being the primary audience of both general interest and consumer product magazines there is constant exposure to the idealistic body image that advertisers and mass media believe women should adhere to.
The advertisements for vodka that the Skyy Vodka company comes out with is filled with sexual tenacity, that draws in both men and women who come across their advertisement. Skyy Vodka is a company who consistently produces and evoke very sexual advertisements. The company’s advertisements repeatedly contains a slim, young, and beautiful females who wear provocative clothing, and in many occasions the women in the advertisement usually has a sexual dominance over the male counterpart. The single underlying reason why Skyy Vodka’s advertisements has proven to be very successful is their use of sex by the way they represent their females. The company do not hold back the appeal to sex and they commonly promote the sexual benefits of drinking Skyy Vodka. The use of sex is used everywhere and we have undoubtedly seen it work from ads in magazines and movies to commercials and merchandise, the fact of the matter is that sex is a great and powerful way to market an item or idea. While the advertisement for Skyy Vodka titled “The Antagonist” seen in People magazine’s May 7, 2007 issue adheres to the usual standards of Skyy ads, it has an underlying theme of white, male supremacy and the female threat to that power. Skyy Vodka has become an object that exemplifies sex to young adult males and creates a sense of confidence as the advertisement suggests that consuming their vodka will result into woman being attracted to them.
Merskin, D (2004) Reviving Lolita? : A Media Literacy Examination of Sexual Portrayals of Girls in Fashion Advertising. In American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 48: pp.119-129. London: Sage Publications.
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
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.
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.
15.)Kalyanaraman, Sriram, PhD, Ichael Redding, and Jason Steele. "SEXUAL SUGGESTIVENESS IN ONLINE ADS: EFFECTS OF OBJECTIFICATION ON OPPOSITE GENDERS." (2000): n. pag. Web. 18 Apr. 2014. .
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...