As constant users of the MTA we do not even realize how many advertisements we see in a day. "We are each exposed to over 1500 ads a day ... " (Kilbourne, 121). Kilbourne also says on that same page "Advertising is the foundation and economic lifeblood of the mass media. The primary purpose of the mass media is to deliver an audience to advertisers." Now must these ads portray women the way that they do? It is necessary for a woman to be the sex object in the photo.
In this photo, the female is placed as a symbol of "pleasure" to the man. Her hips are lifted off of the floor towards him where she is just a sex object. Like Kilbourne discusses in her article Beauty and the Beast of Advertising, the woman is always ported as one of two things: a sex object or a housewife. These kind of images become are appealing to men, which make them a mans advertisement.
Now the fact that women, teenagers and little girls are being exposed to these types of ads, they begin to see themselves as "fat" or "ugly" because they do not look like what the media has portrayed as a norm is kind of disturbing, like in this ad:
This photo says it all. It has become an obsession for women to look like models and celebrities to the point where they do not realize the damage that they are doing to their own bodies. In reality, just being skin and bones is not attractive to the opposite sex. With all of these ads, women begin to believe and convince themselves that the way most models look is normal and what is considered attractive. The average woman is nowhere near a size 0 or small in clothes. The kind of psychological damage this is doing to young girls is unbelievably crazy. Now like Steinem and Kellner discuss in their articles Sex, Lies and Advertising and Reading Images Critically: Toward a Postmodern Pedagogy respectively, many of the products being sold in these ads are somehow related to the sex they are attracting. This can be done in a more positive way where women are portrayed as something more than just sex objects or housewives, where no matter what size they are the women are comfortable in their own skin. For a Public Relations class, we had our final project based on the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty.
These are women of different races, shapes and sizes yet they all look perfectly happy and comfortable in their own skin. Why can't normal women be used in some of these ads to show women that it does not matter how different you are compared to most models in advertisements, everyone is different in their own way; nobody is perfect. Do you really believe that models and celebrities look the way they do in ads naturally? Truth is photoshop does most of that work. Dove:Evolution. Self Explanatory.
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ReplyDeleteIn the Calvin Klein photo it looks like she is definitely passive, but also appears to be allowing and craving it. With her hips lifted and her facial expression she implies that it is something she has been waiting for. That she is an object, she knows that, and wants to be. This is a terrible message as it seems to soften the idea of rape in our culture.
ReplyDeleteI had this conversation with a friend yesterday where we compared a woman who was probably around a size 12 and a woman who was in an image for Versace's H&M campaign. In a comparison the size 12 woman looked significantly bigger that the skeletal "waif-like" model (who also looked into the camera as if to tell us she was indeed dying to look that way) but she looked healthy. My friend, who is female and a feminist, explained to me that no one knows what sizes look like anymore. I just thought I should mention that because it left an impression with me. You also mentioned that "the average woman is nowhere near a size 0 or small in clothes." It's incredible how not many people believe that to be true.
I agree that accepting yourself how and who you are, and having a high self-esteem is very important for any human, not only women. To love and respect your own self as you are and not to rely on any icon, from religion, politics, to a magazine cover. We should listen to our soul and heart, and to caress our self as a unique individual. An advertisement such as the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty might benefit women psychologically and will ameliorate their self-esteem.
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