Women's Advertising : The Aspects Of Women In Advertising

Advertising is an elemental part of today’s society. It is a profitable industry which influences our lives and lifestyle choices sometimes without us even knowing. Brands tend to use immoral tactics to get the viewers’ attention and a commonly used tactic is the objectification and sexualisation of women. Using three contemporary advertisements as examples, this essay will focus on the objectification and sexualisation of women within the chosen advertisements and the semiotics behind the images.

In society today, men are seen as superior to women. Men are placed on a pedestal as if they are more important. Advertisements tend to make this situation worse. The advertisements are shown everyday degrade women and make it seem as if they have to look a certain way in order to be perfect. Women are portrayed as less important in the media due to body shaming, constant comparison to societal standards, and being hypersexualized.

The level that sexism occurs in advertising in 2017 seems to be inequivalent to those seen in 1960’s advertising. The gender roles of women in 1960 were defined and marketed as being submissive, subservient and less than a mans role. Ad’s that air in 2017 show the side of this gender inequality and it is more rampant than initially thought. A quick search turns up just how many advertisers use sex to sell products, ideas and endorsements. As pointed out in Female Stereotypes in Print Advertising: A Retrospective Analysis by Yorgos C. Zotos, Eirini Tsichla, “Gender stereotypes in the media, and the mass media in particular, have a long-recognized capacity to define “socially-acceptable” ways of being or relating to others, as well as to

In today’s society companies are using advertisements to sell their products and get the word around to have consumers buy their products. Companies have been getting really competitive with their advertisements to make them stand out and pulling people in to get them to buy stuff. The advertisements that stood out were the one’s objectifying women and portraying them to be the house wife or considered “easy”. They are also showing women to be less intelligent or less important than men are portrayed in the advertisements. Advertisements today have been targeting women to be the face of their product and having them wear less clothing to have it be appealing to the right audience.

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

Women in Advertisements Our modern society is striving for gender equality. Women have suffered through gender inequality since the beginning of time. Women have made major steps in society, but inequalities such as the pay gap between men and women still remain. Women’s successes and beauty are based upon standards that we set for society, such as; blonde hair, being skinny, having a tan skin tone, and making a lot of money.

In the documentary Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising’s Image of Women by Jean Kilbourne, she talks about how women are depicted in advertisement. The average American will spend 2 years of their life just watching advertisement, and most of these people will make the claim that the ads were not effective to them. Jean Kilbourne stresses that the advertisement companies make their ads quick and cumulative so that they almost seem forgettable. However, the advertisements will still resonate in your mind unconsciously. Kilbourne argues that the objectification of women in the advertisement industry: negatively affects the mental health of women with the societal need to be perfect, encourages the eroticism of violence, and tells women they need

On a daily basis, the average person in the United States is exposed to roughly 3,000 different advertisements that contribute to shaping our society’s ‘ideal’ image of each gender (Baker 13). These images and texts typically represent and reinforce a fabrication of gender roles, expectations, and stereotypes. Examining and understanding the different portrayals of men and women in the advertisement industry is vital because we becoming so highly influenced by these unrealistic, fantasy-type images.

Jean Kilbourne (2010) in the video Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising’s image of women pointed out that people always assume the women in advertisements have the perfect look and a good figure. Many women even feel ashamed when they failed to achieve ideal beauty and retain slim figure after they saw the advertisements. I agree with her idea that the advertisement depict women in a very dangerous way. Many people started to judge women by perfect look and slim figure. These kinds of advertisements may do harm to women’s health mentally and physically, especially to teenagers, when they are trying to achieve perfect appearance as perfect women depicted in advertisements.

In the past the tobacco industry by far has been one of the most scrutinized industries for the strategies they used in promoting their products. The industry, however, found that the success of their products would require vast and effective advertisement (Jiloha, 2012). The value placed on tobaccos promotions cause four companies within the industry, Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds (RJR), American Tobacco Company, and Brown and Williamson to put their products into movies and shows where they can attract viewers. These companies strategically marketed their products and tobacco signage in favorable positions within movies to remove the stigma of tobacco smoking. RJ Reynolds went as far as offering free cigarettes to all Hollywood actor and actress. In addition to television, efforts were also made to put tobacco products in the hands of actors pictured in favored articles and journals.

This Advertisement Exploits the Well-Known Biblical Story of Adam and Eve to Entice Women to Buy America’s Number One Gummy Vitamin

As Alice Walker states, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking

The role of gender in advertising has been an issue in society since modern media emerged as well as the different advertising methods. Modern media uses methods that concentrate on sex and the stereotypical images and ideas of the parts men and women play as consumers. These methods construct a female social problem that began in the 1960s with the portrayal of stereotypical housewives and of women in a general passive role. Today, this image has evolved into a new social problem for women; as they are shown in an entirely different light by the advertising world, and with more repercussions on the image of a woman if she is a minority. Men are portrayed as being aggressive, and are constantly in a pursuit of power, wealth and physical domination

Gender portrayal in advertising has been a widely discussed and researched topic for years by social scientists, consumers, and advertisers alike. However, many people have looked at the topic solely from the perspective of male and female consumers and the effect that gendered advertisements have on them. In an article from The Journal of Advertising, Linda Tuncay Zayer and Catherine A. Coleman researched this topic from a different angle. The article, Advertising Professionals’ Perceptions of the Impact of Gender Portrayals on Men and Women: A Question of Ethics, analyzes the issue from the advertiser’s perceptions of what they are putting out in the media. Zayer and Coleman had two central research questions: “What are advertising professionals’ perceptions of how gender portrayals impact male and female audiences? In what ways do ethics inform their creative and strategic choices regarding gender portrayals in advertising?” (Zayer and Coleman 2015). Research was completed with two rounds of data collection on a wide variety of informants with different levels of experience in the industry (Zayer and Coleman 2015). Research methods included semi-structured and unstructured interviews, a focus group, and field operations (Zayer and Coleman 2015). After research was completed, the informants were placed in four different categories based off three interrelated dimensions of their research. The three dimensions are; (1) the extent to which

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