Alternative to Sexist Advertising?

In the past women have been dominated by just about everything and everyone. At home they were taught to do the laundry, cook, clean, and feed the husband and children. When they were working they were forced to work in sweatshops and factories for low pay at long hours, with little time for themselves or what they looked like. Yet day by day, they were expected to maintain an impeccable image for society and their men. They were either given the title of "housewife" or "sex object" sometimes both.

This was the type of "stereotypical" image advertisers gave women in their ads no matter what the product they were trying to sell. In Jean Kilbourne's reading Beauty and the Beast of Advertising, she states that women in ads are for the most part are "thin, generally tall and long-legged, and above all ... young. All 'beautiful' women in advertisements (including minority women), regardless of product or audience, conform to this norm." For example, in this ad for Listerine, a white, thin, tall woman is being shown looking in a mirror at her teeth yet she's in nothing but her bra and undergarment. Above the woman's head reads the caption "get yourself a sleek new girdle with what you save!" Really!? If they didn't have a picture of a tube of Listerine at the very top, would anyone have even suspected that this was an advertisement for a mouth product. The main focus should be on her teeth and in the ad most of her face is covered in darkness.

 

Comparing Listerine ads from then to now, what does someone see? 

"You know under these clothes I'm naked."

"Here I am. What were your other two wishes!"

Both ads show the man and woman as somewhat of a "sex-object" yet only the woman is showing any skin dressed in a skimpy top while the man is fully clothed. Even the man shown in this image, although doesn't look like the typical "ladies man," exudes a more successful presence than the female. He is seen in his business suit who looks like he works for an office in lower Manhattan while the woman looks like she's from the south, somewhat "hillbilly" like. I feel as if many advertisers today are oblivious to the fact that women are now "bringing home the bacon and cooking it." Meaning women are just as powerful as men are in the workforce as well as the household. And as these so called advertisers put it, ever so nicely in their ads, women are the extravagant spenders. New alternatives must be met to see that woman are no longer starving away their bodies to look like the impossible. 

Once upon a time smoking was considered a sign of power, dominance, and strength. Something only men did during their time in the break room or in their lazy boys reading the morning paper. It was also a sign of considerable wealth. According to Douglas Kellner's, Reading Images Critically: Toward a Postmodern Pedagogy, ads are becoming more and more of a cultural symbol in our everyday life and not just as a means to sell a product. Over 102 billion dollars is being spent on ads alone which is more money spent than on education. Ads create meaning and help to prolong the existence of stereotypes. "Images not only attempt to sell the product by associating it with certain socially desirable qualities, but they sell as well a worldwide view, a lifestyle, and value system congruent with the imperatives of consumer capitalism." (Kellner, 127). In the Marlboro ads the cultural symbol was the image of a rugged cowboy, holding a Marlboro cigarette, portraying what the advertisers called a "real man." He looked very healthy, hardworking, and strong. "Corporations like the tobacco industry undertake campaigns to associate their product with positive and desirable images and gender models." (Kellner, 127). 

 

 I feel like the Virginia Slim, a tobacco company geared towards making "female cigarettes," advertisements are a somewhat light attempt to change the way women should be portrayed in advertisements. Although they still give a passive sexist remark, "...remember how long a woman had to wait for a man to light her cigarette," the woman being photographed is unlike any other women one would identify with as being a "sex-object," or I should put it, a sex-object that's showing any skin. She shows a since of wealth, class, and power. She's holding a Virginia Slim in one hand while the other is leaning onto her hip, while she's standing up tall and looking very alluring in her pride. Yes this ad is passively sexist but it also gives a lot of new advertisers in the field the knowledge that there is more to a woman than just what she is wearing, or not wearing. They need to know that because advertising is becoming more and more of a cultural symbol "to worldview, and lifestyle," (Kellner) little girls need to grow up believing that people will value them for what they have rather than what they don't.

Lucky Strike - tobacco company - with the help of Edward Bernays paved the way for woman and smoking during the 1929 Easter Day Parade.