Preview

Mycalvins Controversy

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
310 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Mycalvins Controversy
Calvin Klein may have grown to become a very successful brand economically, but its emotional impact and the controversy that arise from the brand’s advertisements have awoken and sparked the discontent and indignation of many women and essentially, a great number of consumers. The advertisements have been open to the interpretation of many viewers, whether it be the sexual content of the women in the images, the comparisons between the male and female actions in the #MyCalvins campaign, and the overall effect of these campaigns along with the transcendent view of women over time in advertisements as inferior to men. The way the audience interprets the advertisement may vary and depends greatly on the pragmatics of the ad. But, the continual production of these advertisements are not only intended to sell the product, in fact they are trying to follow a trend, and to engage in different principles of seeing the world and us humans. …show more content…
Klein's advertisements stimulate a sexual desire and reaction of pleasure with the images produced, when in reality, the product is only slightly perceived from the audience through a small band on the waist covered by a pair of jeans or shorts. Women are forced to believe they must look, act, and be whom these ads want them to be, creating troubled stereotypes and ideologies for our modern day society. And as gender stereotypes perpetuated by the ads develop, the quantity of individuals in contact with these ads increases exponentially. The millennial followers on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are pressured to like, comment, or share these posts in which, subconsciously they are not aware that they are forming part of the creation of a greater gender division and

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The first major or/One of the most important differences men and women run into in terms of body image is the disturbing pressure from social media networks on how they perceive an attractive body. The author contends, girls have become victimized by society’s hyper sexualization and are exposed to the idea that their value as female is closely related to their sexuality. (Heldman 65). In contrast advertising companies highly influence women over men because women spend more time obsessing over their physical attributes. Moreover the media exposes women as a sex character, which impairs their judgment towards their body image. For example author contends “it’s because U.S. residents are now being exposed to 3,000 to 5,000 advertisements a day- as many per year as those living a half a century ago would have seen in a lifetime” (Heldman 64). Also everyday men and women and bombarded with unrealistic images from media outlets that influence the human race to acquire unattainable bodies. In contrast men are not as influenced from television advertisements even though they spend more time watching television.…

    • 798 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Summary/Response Paper

    • 962 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Lewis argues that this advertisement “blatantly uses stereotypes” (p. 179) to appeal to society’s decided gender roles and it gravely influences consumers to strive to fit in to those roles. She explains throughout her essay that we have been categorized into these roles over many generations that portray men to be hard, violent, “power incarnate” (p. 179), with no expression of weakness. Women are seen as being unintelligent, overly sensitive, sexual and innocent beings that must obey men. Lewis announces that this ad conveys the message that in order for a man to be “hard and powerful” or a woman to be “sexually intense and desirable” (p.180) they must be dressed in Fila jeans. She contends that there is a powerful sexual theme underlying the message conveyed in this advertisement.…

    • 962 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    With the advents of technology, advertisements depict women as desirable commodities this has poisoned the minds of many young women ultimately morphing values and beliefs. Women are shown in subordinate, submissive, and male pleasing roles. Media and advertisement representation reflects and reinforces sexism in society today. The social standards of beauty and feminism are set by Hollywood’s greatest celebrities. They do this by alluring women into buying cosmetic products affirming the concept of female beauty. Companies such as “bebe”, apply the same technique to persuade women in buying their apparel. In the ad “bebe”, the company portrays a woman holding a bright red lipstick getting off a taxi while flaunting a revealing dress. On the other side, she is shown obeying all rules, in bed with black revealing lingerie with an enticing text, “9pm to 5am obey all the rules, you miss all the fun”. The ad amplifies its message and allures its audience to disobey all the rules if they want to become “the bad girl” by purchasing “bebe’s” apparel.…

    • 1000 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The same companies that claim that to empower women and to stand for feminist values in their advertising are the same companies that exploit the labor of models. The exploitation of models and the usage of commodity feminism is used by companies to their economic advantage. Companies who choose to select models who are underage and undocumented are given cheap labor and more power. And companies who choose to embrace feminist language, without supporting the cause in an authentic way, benefit from the increase in sales from consumers who agree with the empowering messaging. There remains a toxic relationship between advertisers and women, on various levels of engagement, and only through consistent criticism and pushback can these issues be exposed and…

    • 907 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Kilbourne’s article she explains that advertising is damaging to the public and most often hurts women by persuading them to submit to a man’s sexual and non-emotional needs. The author also contends that the poses, the facial expressions, and the body language in these ads are being taken out of the pornography industry. Advertisement examples such as ties, watches and perfumes are used to establish that men are illustrated as being superior to women, leaving the woman to be degraded and submissive. Through more examples of both women and men in ads, Kilbourne’s states that women don’t exactly mean no when they say no and that men are strengthened not to take no for and answer. The conclusion that such media provokes the increasing of rape, sexual harassment, and battery of women is also what the author narrates.…

    • 912 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Can advertisements really cause violence in people’s lives? Jean Kilbourne’s “Two ways a Woman Can Get Hurt: Advertising and Violence” talks about how advertising and violence against women can cause women to be seen as objects. The author discusses how pornography has developed and is now part of social media, which glorifies violence that permeates society and encourages men to act towards women without respect. Kilbourne uses logical and emotional appeals, as well as ethical arguments, to effectively convince readers to ignore specific advertising techniques.…

    • 1683 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    These scenes from the advertising world, and like most of the advertising, they sell more specific than our products. Indeed, sell their needs and desires. In hidden behind advertising information are about each of us want to be successful, physically attractive, even sexy. Advertisements depict gender image advertising that the male consumers of news is to buy a particular product and obtain "sweet little thing", and it was related to the news and women to buy products is our little things (collective and Rosenblum 1988). Is more subtle, model formation mode also exposed the permeation of sex discrimination in Advertising: Female Sex was significantly more likely than males to deploy a model from subordinate positions.…

    • 303 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In Jean Kilbourne’s article “Jesus is a Brand of Jeans”, she says despite what we think, advertising affects us all. We are surrounded by thousands of messages every day. These messages are linked to our deepest emotions, which is a major key component when trying to sell us something. Kilbourne states the problem with advertising isn’t that it creates unrealistic needs, but that it exploits our real and human desires. She expresses that sex sells. Which is true, and rising. Not only do advertisements create artificial needs, they exploit our sexual desires as humans too. This hidden propaganda is posing a danger for today’s youth, especially girls. The author explains that girl’s self esteem is in danger because they will constantly see their bodies as objects rather than who they really are and young men want to be seen as more masculine. Today’s young people cannot escape the world of media and advertising. She even explains that it has become a religion of our society. Advertisements push us to feel passion for objects rather than people or relationships. They present objects with as much importance as another person. Kilbourne explains that advertising creates a hidden craving for satisfaction and happiness. We all like to think we can tune out the propaganda. We don’t realize how big of an interruption all of this is to our lives and our real underlying needs as human beings.…

    • 261 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    But the violent images contribute to the state of terror. And objectification and disconnection create a climate in which there is widespread and increasing violence.” Kilbourne shows concerns about two trends in fashion and advertising that she cites as cultural reactions to the women’s movement. The first is the increase in images of violence against women.This is seen in an ad for Belvedere Vodka that depicts a woman blindfolded being led to a martini glass with a toothpick with two olives-a phallic representation. The second reaction Kilbourne notes is the increase of violent images depicting children--especially young girls. An ad for JC Penny showed two very youthful models dressed as young school girls ad looking vulnerable. These ads seem to suggest that the age of the objectification of women does still exist within the advertising world. Although some parts of the magazine may have objectified women featured, there were actually more displaying positive female role models. Advertisements for Dove body mist and deodorant portrayed women of different healthy weights, shapes and ethnicities- not for sexual gratification but to show confidence. Their contender, Secret, used the motto “When you’re strong, you sparkle.” However, the most positive image might have come from the Nike “Make Yourself” campaign. There were two ads from this campaign in the latest issue of Cosmo. The first read “Make yourself- Strong” and showed an image of Olympic Track and Field…

    • 957 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    15 Basic Appeals

    • 502 Words
    • 3 Pages

    According to Fowles, humans have a number of needs that appeal to their psyche. For example, the need for sex, affiliation, nurture, guidance, and physiological needs. He states that these basic needs, along with many others, are what influences society’s decision making. Fowles states, “ by giving form to people’s deep-lying desires and picturing states of being that individuals privately yearn for, advertisers have the best chance of arresting attention and affecting communication” (Fowles, 1998, p.1). Advertisers try implementing messages, both hidden and apparent, in these needs in hopes of trying to manipulate our decisions. For example, when Calvin Klein used Brooke Shields to model their clothing line, they were trying to target a young female audience. The advertisers were promoting the need for attention by using a sexual figure as a tool to target this particular audience.…

    • 502 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Men on Display

    • 1288 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Susan Bordo describes the ways men can alter an advertisement, and how the way they dress and behave in the advertisement can change the perception of them. Some advertisements that centers around men are used for the sole purpose of exuding sex appeal. Campaigns advertising products such as cologne and fashion use this approach abundantly, mainly to get people’s attention. When men are illustrated this way, it is much more controversial because men are perceived more in a feminine way. As Susan Bordo states, “It is feminine to be on display” (Bordo, 135). Males exuding femininity is not completely accepted in today’s culture because of the stereotype that men should be authoritative and burly men. This approach was used in the Gucci Underwear advertisement that Bordo described in her first chapter. Other ways that an advertisement can showcase a man is by perceiving them as “heterosexual” (Bordo, 145) and a stereotypical burly man. When males are perceived as manly men in an advertisement it appeases to a more homophobic group of people. Bordo believes that it should be just as accepted in todays culture for men to be the center of sexual and risky ads just like it is for women.…

    • 1288 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Ads, of course, are used to sell certain products. But they also send messages about the proper way to behave. If gender roles in ads are believable and realistic to an individual, then the person’s ideas about the correct way of “doing gender” (West and Zimmerman, 1987) for themselves and other genders may be changed.…

    • 1033 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Who are we? Who am I? With the average American exposed to approximately 3,000 ads a day they all remind us of who we are not and who we should be. The images we are constantly bombarded with by the mass media don’t just sell products they “sell values, images, concepts of love, sex, and normativity”, standards to which we so often compare ourselves to. Ads reinforce gender binaries, all making a statement about what it means to be a woman in this culture of thinness stressing a particular importance on physical beauty. Jean Kilbourne’s film Killing Us Softly explores and exposes the detrimental effects of the objectification and dehumanization in the representation of women in the popular culture, specifically advertisements.…

    • 647 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    To analyse this advertisement campaign, we use the critical approach theory. The first principle of this theory states that, all media messages are constructed. Some information is included, but much is also left out. Questions are not asked. Using this approach, we realize that in the Calvin Klein X ad campaign we chose, we only see images of muscular men but not pictures of scrawny looking men. The question is, does wearing Calvin Klein X make you look muscular and hot? Is CK X the only way to make you look good? The way the X is placed on the men’s bodies brings the attention of the viewers to the body and not the product itself. What does this mean? The Ad is in black and white, is there a reason for this?…

    • 557 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    But I think the current generation needs to be educated to critically think outside the box. As it stands now, teenagers are growing up and watching these types of advertisements and are just mimicking what they see. This may cause teens to think that it is acceptable to put a gun to a woman’s head, or that a woman in an elevator is an easy target, or that the way you pick a girl out, is by the size of her breasts or butt. Something has to be done to change the way women are viewed in the media, how women aren’t so confident on how they look, and the way women are being used as sexual objects. This could possibly be done by, censoring the advertisements and music lyrics that are released and also by educating the public about what this new eras’ actions are doing to our…

    • 1190 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays