Preview

Sexism In Advertising

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
587 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Sexism In Advertising
Sexism and Overt Sexuality in Advertising

Everywhere we look advertisements are telling us what it means to be a desirable woman in order to persuade the insecure consumer to purchase a product that will make her more 'beautiful' by society's standard. Many products are pitched with such sexual imagery that it sets up an unrealistic expectation for women to try to achieve with a wonder product that will make your eye lashes fuller or your breasts bigger and perkier. It is my opinion that these ads are constructed to make us see ourselves through a self conscious perspective thus, instilling in our minds that we need multiple improvements in order to be considered attractive by the opposite sex. The fact that women put aside comfort and
…show more content…
A beautiful, busty blonde woman with a dull and ditzy look on her face advertizing for Wonder Bra, where the caption reads “I cant cook. Who cares?” In this ad I imagine the corporate executive who helped create this particular piece of marketing was thinking that this would appeal to large breasted women who wish to have their breasts sit up high and overflowing out of her brassier in a manner that is most desired by men. The quote on the ad is particularly sexist and reaffirms gender roles because it implies that women should know how to cook. The overall message of the Wonder Bra company is portraying is that women should know how to cook, but if they don't it is excusable only if you are beautiful and have perfectly perky breasts. This article is a clear example of the over-sexualization that has become a normal facet of our society. Women are dehumanized and the value of women in this case has been reduced to a pair of breasts. The fact that this is an acceptable depiction of women clearly shows how advertising is created by men with the purpose of being more appealing to and pleasing

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • 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 1960s to the 1990s was an era when there were strict gender roles to be followed. Companies have always used advertising as an outlet for selling their products. These companies have one aim, that is to target their audience and make them want to buy the product. Corporations such as Coke and Marlboro have been successful at finding an audience and then directing their ads towards the people thus making a large profit. Public surveys conducted by Gallup through the 1980s showed that peoples faith in advertising was in decline through out America, particularly in the years between 1970 and 1979, according to a 1994 Journal of Public Policy & Marketing article by John E. Calfee and Debra Jones Ringold. Studies by Harris and Associates found…

    • 240 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In his essay “Men’s Men and Women’s Women,” Steve Craig writes, “Her need is a common one in women’s commercials produced by a patriarchal society-the desire to attain and maintain her physical attractiveness” (194).…

    • 927 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Bordo Essa

    • 1665 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Very often we see women depicted in advertisements wearing very little and trying to seduce the men even though their target market is women. What is the purpose of targeting men with beautiful women, when you are not trying to sell them anything? Simple, it creates an image of what you are supposed to look like to be attractive to a man. Victoria Secret’s commercials constantly do this with women who come out strutting down the runway with one of those looks that says you “Feast on me, I’m here to be looked at, my body is for your eyes.” (Bordo 191) Bordo uses this quote as she describes the young man in the Calvin Klein ad who without being forward about it portrays an image of sexuality. This is contrary to most of the images we usually see and Bordo describes this in an interesting way as she says “His body isn’t a stand-in phallus; rather he has a penis.”…

    • 1665 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

    A wide variety of advertisements have been creating numerous images of men and women for years now regarding gender roles and sex diversity. The advertising industry in particular has formed the impression that “sex sells,” now using women’s bodies as sex objects (Ford, 2008). Previous research has shown men are being outnumbered when it comes to women being sexualized. More importantly, the advertising industry has shown what the “accurate” gender roles for men and women are to be. Men are to be dominant, tough, strong, independent, and detached. Contrastingly, women are to be dependent, loving mothers and wives, concerned with beauty, and emotional. This literature review will look at the ways magazine advertisements portray objects and figures,…

    • 146 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    To begin with, advertising perpetuates many different types of stereotyping. This includes, gender, racial, and sexual types of stereotypes. Most viewers notice the stereotypes that occur in the advertisements. Some critics of advertising believe that negative stereotypes of women and minorities are common in advertising. They argue that much advertising still portray women as the weaker gender whose primary responsible to care for the children and the home, or as sex objects. Any negative or bad press can quickly destroy an image of a person. Therefore, when females begin to see themselves has sex objects; it results in severe personal problems. The problems that it could result in are self-harm, suicide, depression and body dismorphic disorder.…

    • 532 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Women In Advertising

    • 3497 Words
    • 14 Pages

    It is safe to say that through out history advertising has been a major factor to large corporations around the world. In order to sell their products while maintaining a successful business, these large corporations have become extremely smart on how to get the viewers attention. Women and men are both used in advertisements, but as the world changes and the media continues to grow even larger, it seems women are a bigger target of objectification and portrayed as sex objects in these ads.…

    • 3497 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In the last one hundred years, advertisers and film directors have gotten lazy in their fields. Even the writers and directors of commercials have started to lose their talent. Have you noticed that whatever product you are looking into, from burgers to perfume, scandalously clad models and actresses crowd the shot, while the actual product is touched or used once or twice? This is due to the idea that’s been sweeping the offices of writers everywhere, that “Sex sells”. A lack of moral values has been polluting our television channels and commercials between shows, and it’s gotten to the point that women are so overly sexualizxed a new mother can’t even feed her infant child in public without unnecessary criticism and insults. In this modern…

    • 1684 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    African-American Women

    • 1044 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Women, beauty, sex, money--they may seem like completely unrelated words but when combined together create a powerful driving force within American society. This “driving force” is known as media, though, in this essay, I will be focusing mainly on advertisements. There are a variety of ads being made everyday and can be spotted almost everywhere; billboards, magazines, shops, and even online, just to name a few. However, many of these ads--ranging from food to fashion--have began involving women in them. Not just any women either; these women are the idealized women American society has conceptualized as they flaunt their bodies whilst also implying sexual themes. Individuals, literally and figurative, by into the way these advertisements…

    • 1044 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Consequently, the producers are exploiting the topic of feminism as monetary gain for selling their certain products. While marketers present this feministic theme, they still spotlight and present the common negative stereotype of women. Dr. Golden from the University of Texas states, “Marketers have more extensively studied the relationship between consumer behavior and the global self-concept” (Golden-Allison 599). In other words, Golden suggests that marketers use the worldwide stigmas and concepts to relate products to consumers so they will be more likely to purchase them, never claiming if these common stigmas or concepts are positive or negative. While some may believe that the female audience is relating to this commercial because of its support of empowering women, I believe it is the opposite. In the “Like a Girl” commercial, the aspect women are relating to is the constant derogatory idea that women are a weak gender. Women relate to this because they have the most emotional connection towards it; almost every woman has felt undermined by the opposite sex due to common jokes. This forges a common bond, a shared burden of the stereotypical stigma of weakness. Women may feel a sense of hope with the “Like a…

    • 1850 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Nevertheless, men are also tied to very specific stereotypes in the media. The most used profile of men in advertising is the “real men” who is athletic, successful, professional seducer and usually shown with a beautiful women by his side. Furthermore he owns a branded car and has a smartphone. In other words men are very rarely shown during housecleaning. It is reasonable to think that these gender roles displayed in the media establishes male dominance over woman as they have been perceived through the history as the head of the household. Although people are aware of this unequal representation of genders in the media, it seems to be hard for some people to remain objective and insensitive to its influence. Due to this the media can create…

    • 142 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    I do believe that gender roles and advertising do have some influence in the occurrence of violence, because based on advertisements and the media, there are certain roles men and women are to portray. For example, women are the caregivers, have to maintain a clean home, and are inferior to men. Men are to have strong and positive characteristic to be viewed, and considered as a “man.” As in the video, Killing Us Softly 4, Jean Kilbourne states, “turning a human being into a thing is almost the first step towards justifying violence against that person” (ChallengingMedia, 2012). Based on that statement, the media and advertisements expose women as objects by sending a message to some of their viewers that women are useless, worthless and mistreated…

    • 251 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Gender is defined as the behavioral, cultural or psychological traits typically associated with one’s sex. But how are these traits decided and perpetuated? Children aged two to five years old see an average of 22,228 commercials on television. Bu the time a person is 40 years old, they’ve seen up to one million commercials. Psychologists believe we learn gender traits through social learning; through observing others and then modeling their behavior. If this is so, then T.V. ads play a large part in transmitting messages about gender norms in our society. Children, especially, are influenced by this type of social learning. Adults, however, also continue to observe and model others and then modify their behavior of gender norms accordingly as they compare themselves to others.…

    • 1033 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays