Jean Kilbourne: The Perception Of Gender Stereotypes

For women, advertising exemplifies the ideal female body. According to Kilbourne, young girls are taught from a very early age that they need to spend lots of time and money to achieve this “physical perfection.” But realistically this cannot be achieved. The ideal woman’s body is Caucasian, very skinny, big breasts, no flaws, and pretty much no pores. This cannot be achieved because it is physically impossible to look like this; the illusion comes from the secret world of Photoshop. No woman is beautiful enough so they leave it to technology to create perfection. The supermodel Cindy Crawford said, “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford!” She knew the realities of Photoshop and body image, and more women and girls need to become aware of this as well.

Traditionally, women were expected to be feminine, meek and powerless. In Marele Day’s novel, she utilises this subversion of women to challenge society’s perception of gender stereotypes. Day introduces Claudia Valentine as the conventional tough, masculine hard-boiled detective “the black suit was hanging in the wardrobe neatly pressed”, however, later reveals her to be a woman, and the ‘blond’ a male one night stand. Thus, challenging the idea that women are subpar to men by displaying women as strong, capable of doing the work of a man, but also managing to thrive in a harsh setting where women are not usually found. Day, in extract two declares that she deliberately does this to “lull the reader into a sense of security, as all the familiar

Advertisements are messages that are intended to influence their audience. Their sole purpose is to raise awareness of the existence of their product in the people whom they target and to promote the benefits of buying or using it. In our society, many people are trying to transform themselves into someone they are pretending to be. This may be for many reasons, but the main reason is because of influence from the media or different kinds of advertisements. This is especially the case for most of the women. There is a phrase “Beauty is as beauty does”.  This is a phrase that

The advertisement agency benefits from the misrepresentation because the lack of strong icons weakens the girls’ self-esteem, enabling the ads to prey off their insecurities. It contributes to the gender stereotypes, and may limit what boys and girls think is acceptable to be interested in. This connects to why girls tend not to strive in becoming

When really the women photographed look nothing like they really do in real life; they are air brushed, their hair and make-up is professionally done. This sets unrealistic goals for the American women and girls. The younger people are more affected by this because they are more impressionable. This is very damaging to their self-esteem. Once someone self-esteem is cracked or broken they feel less confident in who they are as a person and what they have to say. This can cause someone to not stand up for themselves. It is important that ads try to display a women who is more

Everyday we expose ourselves to thousands of advertisements in a wide variety of environments where ever we go; yet, we fail to realize the influence of the implications being sold to us on these advertisements, particularly about women. Advertisements don’t just sell products; they sell this notion that women are less of humans and more of objects, particularly in the sexual sense. It is important to understand that the advertising worlds’ constant sexual objectification of women has led to a change in sexual pathology in our society, by creating a culture that strives to be the unobtainable image of beauty we see on the cover of magazines. Even more specifically it is important to study the multiple influences that advertisements have

Villines, Zawn. "How Advertisements Targeting Women Undermine Body Image." GoodTherapy. N.p., 10 July 2013. Web. 3 Mar.

One will see a white female with pouting red lips and the very petite body that resembles a thirteen-year-old girl. The extremely artificial women and the heavily photo-shopped pictures in these ad’s create a norm and make those women who look differently, feel insecure of who they are and make them feel as if they are less of a woman, for example they tend to over represent the Caucasian, blonde with bright eyes, white complexion and a petite body. This is an unattainable beauty for most women, which has caused many to develop issues such as eating disorders, depression and the very much talked about these days, anorexia.

Images of female bodies are everywhere. Women, and their bodies, sell everything from food to cars. Women's magazines are full of articles urging women to fit a certain mold. While standing in a grocery store line you can see all different magazines promoting fashion, weight loss, and the latest diet. Although the magazines differ, they all seemingly convey the same idea: if you have the perfect body image you can have it all…the perfect marriage, loving children, great sex, and a rewarding career. The media, whether TV, print, or Internet advertising, seems to play a huge role in influencing women of all ages; from adolescence and teens, to women in their twenties and thirties, as well as

Advertising uses a lot of different techniques to show the public the perfect female image. Body doubles and computer retouching are two examples of how advertisers are able to “doctor” images. The majority of women we see in magazines, music videos. and movies do not appear in reality, as we perceive them in the media. We may actually believe we are looking at one woman’s body when we are actually looking at sections of three or four women’s bodies, which, when spliced together, shows us the best parts of each women’s body as the final product. Women cannot attain these impossible standards of attractiveness. Young girls learn very quickly that they must spend much time, energy, and money on achieving these standards.

Sexist ads show that society is dominated by the same masculine values that have controlled the image of women in the media for years. Sexist advertisement reinforces gender stereotypes and roles, or uses sex appeal to sell products, which degrades the overall public perception of women. The idea that sexism is such a rampant problem comes from the stereotypes that are so deeply embedded into today’s society that they almost seem to be socially acceptable, although they are nowhere near politically correct. Images that objectify women seem to be almost a staple in media and advertising: attractive women are plastered all over ads. The images perpetuate an image of the modern woman, a gender stereotype that is reinforced time and time again by the media. These images are accepted as “okay” in advertising, to depict a particular product as sexy or attractive. And if the product is sexy, so shall be the consumer. In the 1970s, groups of women initially took issue with the objectification of women in advertisements and with the limited roles in which these ads showed women. If they weren’t pin-ups, they were delicate

The roles of males and females in society have significantly changed, as opposed to the predominant roles in our history. In the modern culture of today, women have begun to break out of the mold that which society has placed her in. This much can’t be said when it comes to modern gender representation in mass media advertising. It can be safe to state that woman are seen as sexual, fragile, exotic—whereas men are portrayed as tough, in control, and aggressive. This trend can be one seen as an inhibitor to the advancement of our culture, because especially for women, it is hard to pull away from the stereotypes that are continuously represented. As examples of the given trend, the following

In terms of women and sex appeal, the world of advertising has changed a considerable amount. Many of the advertisements which are seen in newspapers, magazines, and television fail to portray women in a more positive light. The image of females in numerous advertisements are merely viewed as fascinating "objects" while they are also being displayed in a fashion that is supposed to appeal only to men, i.e. exploitation of the body. Though these types of advertisements are very effective at selling their products to consumers, it seems as if the minds ' of women, especially younger women/teenage girls are being corrupted as they are pressured to live up to the ideal image: sexy and thin with a little extra curves.

The construction of women in today’s advertisements has unfortunately reinforced gender stereotypes of teenage girls around the world, because the media portrays women as being everything they are

Commercials, billboards, and magazines now have become sly and seductive sellers tolls. The clever, catchy tunes that tell woman their bodies aren't good enough get placed in the back of a woman's mind never to escape. It's proof of the power of influence. According to Bakari Chavanu, author of an article in rethinkingschools.org, "Students today are more influenced by the popular media outside the classroom that by the textbooks and novels they are forced to read. By the time a person graduates high school they watch 22,000 hours of television, and they've seen 350,000 commercials by the age of seventeen." (www.rethinkingschools.org). They watch it all voluntarily, unable to recognize the damage being done. The images in and on TV shape the values of young people as well as adults. Sadly, these same images are part of a culture in which one out of every woman has an eating disorder, (Levinson 46) girls and younger woman increasingly have problems with low self esteem that eventually leads to dangerous behavior, (www.ed.gov. ERIC...) and where illusions are almost always shattered. Through ads and other media woman are told to believe that the average woman in the real world is white, under 40, not disabled, always heterosexual, and her body (even though absolutely beautiful) is in constant need of improvement.