In the mainstream media, what it seems stereotypical and woeful is that the majority expects to see how the advertising companies are applying the strategy of using women’s sexual appearances in order to sell various products, what is missing in this society is the increase of awareness on seeing women as objects and reveal those so-called the “perfect” body shapes. “Advertising..contribute to them by creating a climate in which the marketing of women’s bodies--the sexual sell and dismemberment, distorted body image ideal and children as sex objects--is seen acceptable”(Kilbourne 125). That is, because numerous companies keep on releasing those sexual advertisements and making women appeared to have less clothes, the message of seeing more women’s bodies and being skinny as the perfect shape are implanted in majority that nowadays, whenever we see a campaign or image that has very sexual material in them, we won’t feel surprised or think this is overly done because we already got used to it and even feel surprise when the advertisement is playing in the reserve role, which is to put men as nearly naked surrounded by women with decent clothes.
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| Marc Jacobs'banned fragrance ads which the model's gesture and the fragrance bottle is considered to be too sexual. |
“..just as the beauty myth today serves government and the economy….Women are mere “beauties” in men’s culture so that culture can be kept male. When women in culture show character they are not desirable, as opposed to the desirable, artless ingenue”(Wolf 63, 59). Women are often showed as the vulnerable and sexual character in order to highlight the importance of men and point out their high social status. Advertising companies take women’s images as their tool to make more money, just as the short video our group presented in class about those burger ads, the models wore less clothes and did all the sexual gestures while washing the car in order to sell the burgers and these can get really confused to many audiences because they don’t know the point of this advertisement whether they are selling the burger or the car, plus the sexual poses and gestures are distracting the male audiences from paying attention to the product. To me, the company does it mainly to get more social attention and basically it’s like they are saying “Even if they don’t buy or care about our products, as long as the advertisement catches people’s eyes and get more viewers, we are fine”. Some advertisements may not seem as sexual as Paris Hilton’s burger commercial(like wearing less clothes) but still affect on women’s images. As an example, Marc Jacobs’fragrance advertisement called “Oh Lola!” featured the young actress Dakota Fanning in 2011 was then banned because the ASA(Advertising Standards Authority) thinks the way Dakota gestured like the big perfume bottle rested between her legs and in her lap, the length of the dress and the way she is holding the perfume bottle and looked at the viewer considered to be too sexual and this would have negative effect on children too. As we see here, the strategy of making the advertisement that can easily catch people’s attention is to sell women’s sexuality and focus on the outside appearance instead of inside beauty.
Moreover, Jean Kilbourne, the cultural theorist and pioneering activist, talked about the advertising image of women as “The problem isn’t sex. It’s the society’s attitude
towards sex”. She also gave numerous great examples on the mainstream expects to see the “perfect body image” and how it affects women. One model got fired because the agency thinks she is too fat and on her photo shoot for the magazine cover, people photoshopped her original image and some how it’s overly done because the proportion between her head and body seems weird and apparently her head seems much bigger whether her body is very skinny. She also claimed about how children get “educated” by those commercials and advertisements that they were taught from being strippers or porn actresses because of the way the companies advertised on some of the toys and tv commercials. Just like in Kilbourne’reading: “..more than hald the fourth-grade girls were dieting and three-quarters felt they were overweight.. “We take them as they are”. Another added, “But boys expect girls to be perfect and beautiful. And skinny”(Kilbourne 124). Numerous sexual advertisements now have bad impact on children that they even worried about how they look and how to be beautiful in boy’s view at such a young age. I feel that is what the society need to be aware of and the stereotype of placing women as sexual objects needs to be stopped.
“Through advertising, the face becomes a mask(something you put on) and the body becomes an object”(Cortese 55). It’s the unsurprised routine that the model’s images that we’ve seen on magazines are mainly photoshopped and with heavy makeup because people think that’s the definition of beauty, and often see those commercial that a man is surrounded by a lot of women or the woman is doing sexual gestures to attract men’s attentions, what the advertisement lacked of is the inside beauty of women which is our intellectuality and it is a must-done to change the point of view on society about women’s appearances in advertising and more women’s voices should be heard. Think about it, just like reverse role in the commercial, will that be attractive and even more welcomed if men are doing those these sexual gestures to women instead of letting women do it to men?
Work Cited
Cortese, Anthony Joseph Paul. "Constructed Bodies, Deconstructing Ads: Sexism in Advertising." Provocateur: Images of Women and Minorities in Advertising. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. 45-76. Print.
Kilbourne, Jean. "Beauty and the Beast of Advertising." Media & Values 1989: 121-25. Print
Wolf, Naomi. "Culture." The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women. New York: W. Morrow, 1991. 58-85. Print.
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| American Eagle banned ads for being too sexual |
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