Advertising is best described by Jean Kilbourne, as an “over
$130 billion a year industry that affects all of us throughout our lives… the
ads sell a great deal more than products. They sell values, images and concepts
of success and worth, love and sexuality, popularity and normalcy. They tell us
who we are and who we should be. Sometimes they sell addictions”(Kilbourne, 121). This is the
perfect way to describe what an advertisement does to an individual. At times
it feeds on people’s insecurities or their naivety to believe that any of these
products can help improve their life in anyway. There are some that do serve
their purpose and some that do help us out. But there are many that don’t and
continue a toxic view on the human body specifically female bodies.
Advertisements
have a huge influence over people. They also somewhat help shape our society
into believing that owning a specific object makes them better than someone or
looking a certain way because of a product makes them better than those who don’t.
The problem is that we are exposed to them every single day from billboards,
television, posters, bills, etc. There is no way to avoid advertisements.
Advertisements at times don’t care how they get their product to sell they just
want it to sell. So the advertisers don’t have our best interest at hearts just
their pockets. They use provocative and at times perverse ways to sell
products. One of the most known things in our society is that ‘sex sells’ and
of course the only people to truly believe such things are the white capitalist
chauvinistic pigs at the top who let these advertisements run. As John Berger wrote, “The commercial images steals her love of herself
as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product” (Cortese 62).
These
advertisements depictions of women are pretty basic just a skinny tall white
woman who get’s photoshopped to no end to look like this perfect female. This
is very toxic and dangerous to very impressionable young girls who think that
the only way they can fit in or be normal is if they are skinny or if they need
to have a certain body type to look pretty or beautiful. This can also be toxic
to females of different races who don’t see women of their race in
advertisements. They feel let down and sometimes ashamed of their background
and culture and skin color that they often go into extremes to change their
body from harsh chemical products or by going under the knife and getting
plastic surgery. “Labeled by fashion critics as the black Brigitte
Bardot, she embodies an aesthetic that suggests black women, while appealing
‘different’, must resemble white women to be considered really beautiful ”
(hooks 125).
The
women shown as perfect in these advertisements are very small demographic of
all the people in the world and exclude a lot of people out. This leads to many
eating disorders and mental disorders like body dismorphia. This is detrimental
because not only are women already treated less than a man but by putting these
advertisements women only become less empowered.
Advertisements
as well as other parts of the patriarchal white supremacist capitalistic society
we live in, make the women less empowered if they aren’t pretty or beautiful
and won’t amount to anything if they aren’t attractive to the male viewer or
observer shown as in the male gaze. Many
women in power or that are ceo or owners of companies never get paid any
attention to because they aren’t pretty and apparently not worth noting for
their accomplishments. The body image shown in adverts is terrible because it
makes women feel really insecure and the worst part is that the average woman
in the USA is nothing close or near to the body image the models portray.
A lot
of advertisements not only make women insecure for not looking like these
models but also a lot of times these advertisements make nothing seem more than
just body parts not worth to be known for their personality but just their
bodies. This perpetuates many heterosexual male viewers to overly sexual normal
female features and at times makes them treat women like crap because the
advertisements portray as being worth nothing other than a good body or to be
looked at. At times too these advertisements help institute violence and
domination over women to extreme parts at times to even promote rape.
Sexist
advertisements sells because it perpetuates something that the mainstream
society keeps depicting and portraying and it still sells. They use women in
several ways to sell the ads,
“1. Superiority.
Three common tactics used to establish superiority are size, attention and
positioning…
2. Dismemberment.
Women’s bodies are often dismembered and treated as separate parts,
perpetuating the concept that a woman’s body is not connected to her mind and
emotions.
3. Clowning. … women
are pictured as playful clowns, perpetuating the attitude that women are
childish and cannot be taken seriously.
4.Canting. … The
woman appeaers off-balance, insecure and weak. Her upraised hand in front of
her face also conveys shame or embarrassment.
5.
Dominance/Violence. The tragic abuse-affection cycle that many women are
trapped in is too often glorified in advertising…”
-Research by Media & Values intern Barbie
White
From Erving Goffman’s Gender advertisements,
Harper Colorphon Books (1979).
This quote taken from a
research is present in Jean Kilbournes “Beauty and the Beast of Advertising”
and it really shows how woman are misrepresented and only know for their body
and nothing else to be taken serious or to even care about. This leads to more
abuse to women and less care about their actual achievements rather than just their
looks.
The
only way we can stop this cycle from going and from us to keep portraying these
sexist and uncreative advertisements is if we get more female advertisers to
come with better ideas to sell a product other than some half naked women. Also
to help show the diversity of women around the world and also showing women of
different body types. We need to have average women in advertisements in media
in television shows so it can accurately portray females and not lead to insecurities
for not looking a certain way. Not only is advertisements at times sexist,
demeaning, uncreative, but can also be downright racist and put down people for
not having a certain type of complex which leads to bigger problems and some of
those problems can be seen simply from this video of a musician named Dencia
who defends a product called “Whitenicious” and says that white is pure. This
shows how badly embedded these thoughts of beauty are that people can’t feel
comfortable in their own skin.
Works Cited
Cortese, Anthony. “Constructed Bodies, Deconstructing Ads Sexism in Advertising.” Provocateur: Images of Women and Minorities in Advertising. United Kingdom: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. 45-76. Print
hooks, bell. “Selling Hot Pussy: Representations of Black Female Sexuality in the Cultural Marketplace.” Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press, 1992. 122 -132. Print.
Kilbourne, Jean. “Beauty and the Beast of Advertising”
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