Gender objectification and power in advertising

  Your gender is part of your identity to the opposite sex, in order to be distinguished one gender from the other. Gender and sexuality are part of advertising images. In the advertising images we have idealization of sex, women have to look more feminist and men have to be bigger and stronger.  Female body is use as a sexual object in most of the cases and in men cases it happen the same.  The advertisers use the gender binary which shows the difference between the two sexes to sell their products. “Woman and man are similarly produced within the binary frame (Butler, 31).” In the sense that each gender has to have its own stereotype to be differentiated one to the other.

women seen as a sex symbol, men showing his masculinity.

We can say that the “ideal female aspect” for advertising is always skinny, tall, long hair, usually blonde and light tone skin. If the women have all these features, then she is qualify to advertise any product, with the expectation that the product will be sold. Most of the perfume advertising lately has a nude woman with it, in which we can notice the whole seductive naked body more than the little perfume bottle. The perfume is in a little corner in a tiny size. On the other hand, we have the objectification of male figure which is presented similarly as women, with the difference that men, do not get perceive as if they were selling sex like is the women cases. Therefore, men are presented on advertising half naked but the message is different, he is just showing his masculinity.

Objectification of women in advertising.

Objectification of men in advertising.

“Beauvoir proposes that the female body ought to be the situation and instrumentality of women’s freedom, not a defining and limiting essence (Butler, 16).” A good example for this quotation is Hooters in which we see women presented as a sex symbol in order to attract customers (male customers preference), just to sell their products. Women have to be thin, big breast and use tight clothes in order to be able to work there.

Female body ought to be the situation.

Advertising are the open flag for young people and they are aware of it, so they take advantages of it, just to sell their product. “Adolescent are new and inexperienced consumers and such prime targets (Kilbourne, 129).”  Young people are basically the objective of advertising because “they are in the process of learning their values and roles and developing their self concepts (Kilbourne, 129).” So usually adolescent wants to be cool trying to copy everything that they see, especially things that are giving on the media. Girls get the wrong idea thought the media in which they fight to be perfect. “Girls of all ages get the message that they must be flawlessly and above all these days, they must be thin (Kilbourne, 132).” They think that they are expected to be and to look as the images they see and read on magazines and advertising.  The whole society is part of these too, since everybody sees these images and, “they influence their sense of how girls should be (Kilbourne, 139).” Therefore, girls are told how they should behave and they never get to develop their own personality. “Girls grow into women afraid to speak up for themselves or to use their voices to protect themselves from a variety of dangers (139).” Women learn to be an object for men since their young age. “Mass media have been obsessed with defining and exaggerating codes of masculinity and femininity, they have ensnared us in an endless struggle for gender self definition (Douglas, 17).”

Popular culture is found in all these images shown in the media. We all learn the message that is transmitted to us and we follow them as a rule in our culture. We all learned all these messages that are giving to us and we accepted them without questioning. We all critique our appearance at some point, thanks to the influence that surround us, instead of critique and question the message we received from the media.  

An alternative path for the industry will be to try to have diversity in their images. In other words try to use a mixture of people to advertising their product (all kinds of women) and try to show them in a more natural way. This way the society will not get the wrong idea trying to get the perfect image, it will be no a stereotype to follow but a mixture, just the way is our world. Presenting all types of figures, people will be less influence in follow an erroneous image. Another thing that advertiser should consider on changing, is not to use women as a sex symbol, instead they can use women in their advertising by trying to focus more on the message of their product. For example if there is a perfume advertising instead of putting a nude women, they should try to built an image of a women (dressing regular clothing) that is buying the perfume, and try to show more the product that they are advertising. I think they should be more creative and try different options and not keep the same image because there is not only one specific consumer.

gender role stereotypes,sexual objectification, and power in advertising.

Works Cited:

1) Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge,    1990. Print.

2)Douglas, Susan J. Where the Girls Are: Growing up Female with the Mass Media. New York: Times, 1994. Print.

3) Kilbourne, Jean. "Beauty and the Beast of Advertising." Media & Values 1989: 121-25. Web.