Women and media
Michelle Viera
The consumer nature of capitalist America’s advertising, opens a conversation of many subjects that can be very harmful or beneficial in some cases. Advertising has become the biggest market for businesses to gain there highest profits from vulnerable and highly distracted consumers. Via advertising that is now not only available in print form, but in digital form as well, the consumer of today is a target at all times. In some cases ads become harmful because of misinterpretation and misguidance. Images of advertising have become a reflection of our society portraying images of sexism, racism and power hierarchy.
Children begin to get targeted as early as their infant years and are highly susceptible to viewing adult ads since they are now highly visible in areas of transportation, such as bus stops train stations and billboards. The internet has done an immense contribution in turning advertising into an excessive market that proves invasive and faulty when the wrong viewer is reached. Recently at an attempt to relieve the damage the advertisement industry has caused to young women, children and men, there has been a spread of ads that try to connect with the audience on a more emotional level. The Ad council launched a campaign for diversity and inclusion titled “Love has no labels,” which has been successful in gaining proper attention and providing a universal message that eliminates marginalization.
Advertising is treated as a complex platform that reacts to social patterns within sales statistics. “According to D’Emilio’s argument that capitalism and the institution of wage labor has created the material conditions for homosexual desire and identity, gay window advertising is a logical outgrowth of capitalist development,..”(Clark,pg. 147) Clark addresses the idea that as social norms change the advertising industry naturally follows in order to be successful.
A far as programming the average viewer watches more advertising then actual programming. One reason why highly sexualized ads remain unavoidable is because companies choose to follow the belief that, “Sex sells.” “We did not try to appeal to gays. We try to appeal period. With healthy beautiful people. (Clark, pg.144) The author of Commodity lesbianism,” speaks of a dual marketing strategy that underline the premise by which ads are constructed. The theory that all human beings like what they can’t have, therefore they feed into images of there unconscious and sometimes conscious desires is one that has effected the way images portray gender, and race amongst many other social issues in a mis guided fashion. “These conclusions were based on a conspiracy theory that placed ultimate power in the hands of corporate patriarchy and neglected no power or sense of agency to the female spectator.” (Clarks, pg.147) Clark, explains that the advertising industry again as another form of male gaze constructs social perception. That the advertisements are made to attract women but the ones imposing the material are creating material that is what men think women want, not what women think women want. “In other words this type of advertising invites us to look into the ad to identify with elements of style, invites us in as consumers, invites us to be a part of a fashionable in crowd, but negates an action on coming out.” (Clark, 147) Essentially the theory of advertising is based on assumptions that have great effects on the audience.
A trend that has been a game for advertisers has been the constant fight to keep cigaret sales up. Edwards Barneys opened the market for female smokers with a propaganda staged event that had women smoking publicly. “The ad tells women that it is progressive and socially acceptable to smoke.” By using the phrase “You’ve come a long way baby.” (Kellner,129) Since woman began smoking publicly young females have become the center of attention to large markets because of how easily they have been persuaded in the past. Women being a target is a continuos feature of advertising as we see it in Victoria secret commercials. One in particular aired in 2015 uses the lyrics of a song that says, “I got it, you've got it, everybody gets it” in the attempt to make the Victoria secret look universal.
The new advertisements like that of Disney’s new campaign on what it means to be a princess proves successful in providing values to the young viewers, while maintaining its purpose of supporting the Disney Princesses brand. It is slow changes of this kind that will prove effective on the long run towards media reform that is required in order to see a greater impact on social reform.
Works cited
- Danae Clark- Commodity Lesbianism
- Douglas Kellner- Reading Images
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