The Problem and the Solution

            Advertisements are selective and represent a few. It is much easier to find advertisements on the objectification of women, the messages used to be more blatant and upfront in the beginning of the advertisement industry but now the messages are more complex, subtle or subliminal. That is not to say they are not less dangerous or important. The advertisements aimed at women, about women have much to say about the men. 

Real women have curves.

Because humans are so petty.

Just like this photo on the left talks about 3 billion women that are reduced to only 8, the men, who create the advertisements and are also targeting men with those objectifying advertisements, are the minority.  The ad of “Ruby” (anti-Barbie) is old and may most likely stay in the past since this company that was promoting self-appreciation, was bought out by L’Oreal. The producers and creators of those dehumanizing advertisements are also saying that men can only process and understand messages that are about sex. They are

reducing men to people who are more animal like than human.    

                                                      

 The question is how did we get so far down this road, how did we let ourselves buy into this “beauty

It's what we think that matters.

myth” and feed it while we ourselves are becoming thinner and thinner, inches away from disappearing. Yes, we did let this happen to ourselves. As this ad explains, our bodies are not the ones who need to change. Our bodies have been the same as always. There have always been chubbier people; others naturally thinner, some have wider hips while others have a bigger bust.

            The answer of course, is not quite so simple or easily answered but there is a start. “Women’s magazines for over a century have been one of the most powerful agents for changing women’s roles… they have consistently glamorized whatever the economy, their advertisers, and, during wartime, the government, needed at that moment from women,” (Wolf, p64). Our government used to be more involved in what advertisements were aired on television because they were aware of how influential advertisements can be on the masses, in particular women. 

After World War II the government encouraged spending on home appliances to make a statement and push their political agenda worldwide. 

No one noticed how skinny she was.

 Women bought these home appliances with the idea of fitting into or fulfilling the idea of a “complete home” with those appliances when in fact the government was proving a point about a capitalist market. This in its turn was effective so it is interesting to note that the government is not doing anything about the methods of the advertising market, how they target their audience and how lasting an effect the message behind the advertisements are.  “How to make sure that busy, stimulated working women would keep consuming at the levels they had done… Somehow, somewhere, someone must have figured out that they will buy more things if they are kept in the self-hating, ever-failing, hungry, and sexually insecure state of being aspiring “beauties,” (Wolf, p66). The beauty industry is successfully selling an image of what “true beauty” is in order to keep their consumers preoccupied with buying their products. What no one is noticing or fighting to bring to attention is what is happening in the process. There are plenty of “Isabelle Caro’s” in the world. Women, and more recently young girls, are killing themselves in order to fulfill the requirements of “the ideal beautiful woman” that in fact does not exist.

            Advertisements like the one on the right are amusing; it is comical at a glance, harmless

"Vintage" company reaching out to their audience.

almost but not really. Not at all actually. Once in a while, an advertisement with this image is funny but not all of the time. Once in a while, a “dumb girl” used to highlight how simple it is to use a technology is cute but not all the time, every time.

            It is fair to say there are some things that women are known for, that are typical for women to do but not fair to generalize all women as exactly the same. And it is safe to say, in a general way, that stupidity is not exclusive to a gender. The real problem with these advertisements is that they perpetuate a stereotype that is not an accurate depiction of a group of people so diverse and big as ‘women’. The same thing can be said of men.

In recent news we have seen just how effective the voice of the masses can be made strong and loud in the face of an issue that threatens everyone, and in this strength, bring about change with the power of the government. “Advocacy advertising takes issues into public view by attracting media attention,” (Cortese, p45); the Federal Communications Commission was recently in the spotlight for officially taking a stand in the way media is regulated since the 1970’s. In order for change to happen, more effective change, more people need to care. More people, men and women, need to realize that message our society is receiving is not healthy and it is not attainable without killing society in the process. 

Bordo. Discourses and Conceptions of the Body: Hunger as Ideology, pages 100-134.

Kilburne, Jean. The Beast of Advertising. pages 121-125. 

Cortese. Constructing Bodies, Deconstructing Ads: Sexism in Advertising, pages 45-76.

Wolf. Culture, pages 58-85