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“Advertising is the foundation and economic lifeblood of the mass media.” (Kilbourne, 121)

Today advertising is one of the most big selling industry.  In some ways, it affects society badly.  Advertisement has a way of influencing society on how they should be and behave.  

Budweiser Advertisement

When looking into advertising and how it is used to promote a product, it mostly uses women who are exposing most of their body next to the product to capture the attention of society. In what way does that get our attention? Well take the Budweiser advertisement for example, there is a beautiful tall skinny women who is standing by the oversize beer. This advertisement is for men because it promotes beer and what better way of getting men's attention with beer and attractive skinny women. This is what shapes our society view on women. Advertisers put women next to an object, and not just any women, it has to be a beautiful woman, a woman that all men wants.

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The saying “Sex Sells” is the whole idea of women getting half naked, objectifying themselves to sell a product.  But why use ? Because advertisers look for the attention of men and young teens.  Putting a half naked women in a commercials, poster or any other form of advertising gives men the idea of how women should be and it gives the idea to teenage girls on how they should be to get the attention from men.  Kilbourne’s “Beauty and the Beast of Advertising” she states “...on the most obvious level they learn the stereotypes.  Advertising creates a mythical, WASP-oriented world in which no one is ever ugly, overweight, poor, struggling or disabled either physically or mentally.”. According to Kilbourne, advertisers target mostly teenagers because they are “inexperience consumers”.  Teenage girls look at advertisements and believe either they have to be like them or they won't fit in; that they have to be into their looks instead of their education because thats what boys like.

Not only teenage girls are affected by advertisement in the media, but as well as teenage boys.  Teenage boys is taught to objectify women through advertising. Not only does advertising affect teenage girls and their appearances but it also affect boys and men. "The beefy, muscular look had found a receptive audience in everything from beer commercials to clothing ads. It may have evolved as a need to compensate for the widespread violence in postmodern society. An overdeveloped body has traditionally been viewed as a sign of vanity. Now men may be bodybuilding to produce a strong physical image or give the illusion of invincibility in hopes of being a lack of economic security and control over one's work. In other words, a physically powerful look validates masculine identity and provides a dominating image for safety and protection." (Cortese, 59). The only men you see in advertisement are big muscular and overpowering of woman. And all they should look in a woman should be beauty, which is absolutely ridiculous.

Advertising: Men VS Women

What advertisement teaches society is that you can’t have flaws; either you're beautifully perfect or nothing at all.  Advertisements always show women with perfect bodies (perfect breast size, perfect butt, no fat, and no marks.)  And of course if a woman sees these advertisement and does not have the “perfect body” then she’ll feel like shit.  But what amazes me is that the women in these advertisement are not real.  A little help with photoshop and bam!...the women is turned into a goddess and every women in society should want to be like her.  Products like make up and any other beauty products are the biggest problem in advertisement.  In any beauty product commercial, it promotes women to buy the product to feel like they can become this the unrealistic woman.  But no beauty products can't make women look like the women in the advertisement. It's like what Kilbourne states "The sex object is a mannequin, a shell. Conventional beauty is her only attribute. She has no lines or wrinkles, no scars or blemishes, she has no pores. She is thin, generally tall and long-legged, and, above all, she is young. All "beautiful" women in advertisements (including minority women), regardless of product or audience, conform to this norm. Women are constantly exhorted to emulate this ideal, to feel ashamed and guilty if they fail, and to feel that their desirability and lovability are contingent upon physical perfection."

Before and After Photoshop

Advertisement is a world where promoters create an unrealistic person (male or female) to sell products that fit the gender roles. Women are either objectified or they are fitted in their "role" such as cleaning, beauty, or any other advertisement that undermine women. For men, advertisement is more beneficial for them. They are showed with more power, more confidence, and less hypersexualized than women. But what they don't show is how fake advertisement can be.