One of my favorite comediennes is Margaret Cho. She was the first Asian-American actor to
have her own television show. It was
called “All-American Girl” and got replaced by the Drew Carey show which she
was bitter about since he wasn’t much skinnier than her.
An article about her issues with the show that was soon
cancelled is here:
Sexism, racism, and power hierarchies are rampant in the
advertisements of American media. Advertising
Age referred to the Silva Thin cigarette theme, “How to Get a Woman's
Attention: Ignore Her” (Steinem 113).
The purpose of this cigarette ad was to promote the macho image of a man
who views himself as superior to women.
The unintended effect would be a young man seeing this ad and rudely
disobeying his mother, teachers, sister, and girlfriends because of it. Young boys who like to read advertisements
would be influenced by ads like this and grow up to be sexist men who think they
need to ignore women to be friends with them.
An alternative to this image would be to promote being a
gentleman or nice person in general. An
advertising strategy would be to post pictures of men helping women across the
street or vice versa. The goals would be
to present a different view to counter the sexist imagery that has been
introduced to young people. I was also
thinking about the Oscars and how women and men are usually separated in every
category for acting. Why can't the most
beautiful actresses compete with men for the category of “Best Actor”? It would be a very powerful image to see
Meryl Streep beating Daniel Day Lewis for best actor/actress instead of just
Meryl beating Julia Roberts or Daniel beating George Clooney. It is time to change the awards system or
else create a whole new awards ceremony to celebrate racial diversity and
gender diversity as well.
Kilbourne said it best at the end of Beauty and the Beast
of Advertising. Women are supposed
to be “passive and dependent, never to mature.
The disparagement of maturity is, of course, insulting and frustrating
to adult women, and the implication that little girls are seductive is
dangerous to real children. (Kilbourne 124).”
Pedophilia is an unintended effect of sexualized toddler images in
advertising.
In 1902, a Virginia Slims ad featured a woman serving her
man with an irritated look (Kellner 129).
The company behind the marketing campaign wanted to deal with a theme of
servitude to present the views of power hierarchies between women and their
male partners. A woman with a husband
may see the ad and mentally relate to it or be offended by it. Not every woman serves their man. However, there may be some women who like to
serve their man.
Not only must women be thin, they must also be young
forever. “Magazines try to avoid
photographs of older women (Wolf 82).”
Failing magazines become so entrenched in the need for profits and ad
revenue that they disregard older audiences.
This will result in heavily biased and incomplete representations of
America as a whole It seems like the
only people who are being marketed to are skinny white young adults and that is
not the case at all.
There are so many studies that have been done to correlate
self-images with media. For instance, a
study of fifth graders revealed that 10-year-old girls and boys were
dissatisfied with their own bodies after watching an episode of Friends
(Wykes 215). Children will grow to
starve themselves their whole lives.
They will hold themselves and potential mates to impossible standards
and forever be bitter about their lives.
This cycle must stop since it is such an unoriginal,
repetitive, and insulting way to represent the many faces and bodies that make
up our country. It’s discouraging when
young children have to feel bad about themselves since Hollywood or the media
refuses to be true to the reality of our society.
Sources:
Sex, Lies and Advertising – Gloria Steinem
Beauty and the Beast of Advertising – Jean Kilbourne
Reading Images Critically – Douglas Kellner
Culture – Wolf
Body Messages and Body Meanings - Wykes
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