So Much Advertising for Women

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.

We are constantly surrounded by images of the “perfect” woman. She is tall, thin and beautiful. She rarely looks older than 25, has a flawless body, and her hair and clothes are always perfect. She is not human. She is often shown in pieces – a stomach, a pair of legs, a beautifully made up eye or mouth. Our culture judges women, and women judge themselves, against this standard. It is forgotten that “beauty pornography”, as Wolf says, focuses on underweight models that are usually 15 to 20 years old. Flaws, wrinkles and other problems are airbrushed out of the picture.

In the video, Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women, the way women are portrayed in advertising is explored in great detail. The video exposes the gender stereotypes that are depicted in advertising on a regular basis. The effects of mass advertising are also explored particularly the effect of objectification of women on young girls. Young girls and women are affected by these constant and never-ending advertisements sexualizing women and marginalizing them to a desired look, which is unrealistic for most women. These advertisements send a message to women that if they don’t look like the women that are being portrayed on TV, they are not worth much. Young women and teenagers are influenced even easier. Media pushes the message to young kids that their self worth is determined by how they look and what they wear.

When watching Jean Kilbourne’s documentary titled, Killing Us Softly I learned a lot of hidden secrets about advertising and what it does to women. Kilbourne touches on many topics like, women's role in society, how they are used in ads, and how it affects women. She starts of her talk by

Every day people get targeted by companies and their advertisements, the way they manage to reach out and clutch your attention is easily achieved through television, Internet, driving down the street, listening to your favorite radio station, or at any kind of retail store. Some sort of advertisement will clinch your attention that’s certain. These ads hook you on by establishing a certain type of message; the ads can manipulate people’s attitude and opinions. “The ads industry affects people’s lives by shaping or reshaping their opinions, attitudes and beliefs.” Marshall McLuhan (1964) these ads are the greatest resource to look at gender stereotyping, because they are adjusted to the specific target either male or female. The aim of modern advertising successfully reaches its target audience not only and sometime not even by fulfilling the needs of the individual but by directing their creation.

Individuals are flooded with about 4,000 to 10,000 advertisements each day according to Digital Marketing experts. The advertising and marketing industry have created a society where everywhere you look there is an advertisement, from commercials on television to ads on our cellphones. These people’s job is solely to sell a product, idea, or service and at many times in a creative way to catch the attention of the consumers. Many ads unfortunately come out to show ideas about devaluing of women. The issue is that advertisements place impossible standards for women in society, so it should be addressed to stop it because objectifying women is dehumanizing.

Requirements of beauty are presented in almost all figures of trending media, which bombard women with images that illustrate what is scrutinized to be recognized as the perfect body. With fashion magazines, advertisements, movies, and television shows displaying young and attractive women whose body density is extremely below that of the ordinary everyday woman in reality, women begin to get self conscious and try to change themselves. When women begin to obsess over having the body of a model, dieting and exercise are not good or fast enough for the results they want. Because of their genetic body types, several of the standards for this body image are nearly impossible for most women to attain without plastic surgery of some kind. The flawless image of a female’s body that the media portrays does not actually exist; however, women starve themselves or pay for plastic surgery,

Each day we are constantly being bombarded with hundreds of advertisements every way we turn. Advertising has become something that is impossible to escape even if we try. They are so common that one does not even stop for a moment to realize that they are looking at them. Unfortunately, the ads have evolved over time as more sexualized, objectifying, and sexist particularly toward women. The most disturbing aspect of it all is that nobody seems to really mind the display of such ads. People are less offended or concerned that the portrayal of women as sex objects in the media is becoming more and more typical. Because so many of us look to the media for answers on our appearance, clothing choices, and actions this becomes a terrifying thing

Advertisements are the powerful means of communications that not only promotes the products, services, goods; but alongside promoting cultural and gender symbols. Advertising has long been criticized for the insensitivity to minorities, women, immigrants, the elderly and a myriad of other groups. This insensitivity in advertising has being adversely affected the societal perception towards these groups particularly women. Too often women are portrayed as either subservient house wives who are only for looking after their husbands, children and in-laws. Their role has further derided by merely portraying them as the objects to satisfy male desires and pleasures. If we believe that advertising has the ability to shape our values and our views of the world, then it is essential that advertisers should become aware of how they portray different groups.

Women in advertisements have always been portrayed negatively due to degrading stereotypes, making them feel self-conscious and stopping them from doing things from fear of judgement. “Fear of judgement is stopping many of us from taking part in exercise. But as thousands of women up and down the country are proving, it really doesn’t have to” (This girl can, 2015). Advertisers are conscious that stereotypes are not an exact representation of women, but ads with sexy women sell, therefore they have no reason to change them. Advertisers love to use gender representation as according to Barthel (1988), they restructure adverts exploiting gender identity to attract people’s attention and

It has always been noticed, since the beginning of advertisements, that women have often been objectified and in some upsetting cases put down, insulted, or degraded. Over the years the advertisements better but we still see some major flaws in the way the media portrays women. We see advertisements with semi-naked women which sexually objectifies them. We perceive the idea of the “perfect women” which does not exist but gives women the mindset that they are not good enough if they do not look like the photoshopped women in the advertisement. Also, females in the media are often shown as being weaker than males which again, can cause some insecurity issues in a women. Finally, advertisements use

Have you ever wondered how advertisements influence gender roles? It is very obvious that gender and advertising are connected to each other. Advertisements have influenced people vastly, teaching the viewer’s how to distinguish themselves between boy and girl. Marketing advertisers will sell products that are feminine or masculine there are various amounts of ways advertisements use accomplish this. Advertisers display traditional roles as well to reach the consumers attention. Advertisers have evolved to make advertising a large portion area of life, portraying the images of men and women, while using stereotypes.

Advertising is a multibillion-dollar industry, which is used to influence people 3000 times per day. Humans see the ads without even realizing it because of how accustomed we are to them. Ads even have ways of influencing us to be more “manly” or “vulnerable”, and can be very stereotypical or even sexist. Ads manipulate stereotypical roles of the sexes, the psychological appeal to colors, and how society appeals to men and women to sell ads.

Advertising has been around since the 1850’s when Volney B. Palmer opened the first advertising agency in Philadelphia. From the beginning of this era, these ads have aided many businesses in promoting their products to the public but they don’t only promote these specific products. These advertisements promote what are thought to be social “norms” for women. They sell ideals for family, work, love, and the success that women are allowed to have. With all of this, they aim to communicate how a woman should be, in order to be completely excepted into society without being ridiculed for not following those social norms that these ads intend to implement. Today, “we are exposed to about 3,000 ads a day” (Heiss). Many ads depict women as being

The advertising world has shaped society’s views of beauty and what women should aim to look like. Advertisements are plastered everywhere. They are on billboards, the sides of trains and buses, as well as social media networks. People were only exposed to the advertisements of photoshopped models and celebrities with “perfect” bodies on magazine covers and in television commercials, but nowadays, due to the media, we are frequently exposed to them. In “Real Women on Real Beauty”, Kimberly Bissell points out the advertising usually sends out the distorted message that “the thin ideal is possible with the right amount of effort and self-sacrifice” and therefore, “women spend a lot of time and energy trying to obtain something that is not only superficial, but also impossible” (Bissell 659). To make the whole situation worse, the industry uses both models and photoshopping software to ensure that the ads would show the “perfect” woman, instead of using people with average body types. Even though models are already thin, they are photoshopped to appear even thinner by the media’s usage of a “digital diet”, where editors shave the sides of models, making their bodies appear flawless (Bissell 664).