Advertising

As consumers, we are surrounded by countless of advertisements each and everyday. As of 2009, it is estimated that we are exposed to about 5,000 advertisements per day.  Advertisements are utilized by companies to deliver a message to consumers, through a combination of visuals and text.  With these two ingredients, companies manipulate to two with concepts such as sexism, and racism.  
Despite having an equal presence in the advertising industry it still seems that the industry is dominated by men.  According to John Berger in Ways of Seeing, “men act and women appear” (Berger, 47).  We are constantly reminded that women are “objects” through these advertisements.  

Naomi Wolf writes “women are mere “beauties in men’s culture so that culture can be kept male”. Advertisements promote gender hierarchies, and in most cases, women are portrayed as weak, stay at home mothers, and the only way they can be the heroine is to “have babies”, or to “keep on being beautiful” (Wolf, 67).  They objectify women to make them appear weaker and lesser than men, and they assert dominance through these advertisements

Through advertisements, companies can play upon stereotypes and images, and if used frequently enough, can become a desirable expectations that are unattainable reality for society.  One of these expectations is body image. Jean Kilbourne writes, “they are even more powerfully attuned to images of women, because they learn from these images what is expected of them, what they are to become” (Kilbourne, 138).  Advertisements have and are still being criticized for using models that are considered “flawless” or “perfect”.  Companies are using these beautiful women to sell their products.  However, despite their main goal to increase sales, these advertisements come with a negative.  In Cutting Girls Down Kilbourne states: “advertising is one of the most potent messengers in a culture that can be toxic for girls’ self-esteem”.  The advertisements play on body image, like the one below.  Weight is a topic that is often addressed by the media, and slim and skinny is the standard, and young girls take these images very seriously, where they try to emulate these women.   Jean Kilbourne writes “Advertising is one of the most potent messengers in a culture that can be toxic for girls’ self-esteem” (Kilbourne, 131).

According to bell hooks, “patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and …..” (bell hooks, 18).  We live in a society where the idea of patriarchy is ingrained in the minds of fathers and sons everywhere.  Patriarchy is at the root of this problem with the way the media portrays women.  To most men, and even women, this is taught to their children it seems like a “natural” way to organize life (bell hooks, 18).  By order to break this “tradition”, the sexism that exists in the media and in society would begin to be seen as something that is frowned upon rather than something that used as a guideline to how to raise their children.  Until patriarchy loses its hold on society, we will continue to see ads like these, which objectify women. The ads themselves reinforce the idea of patriarchy, and therefore we are locked in a cycle, unless one of these influences is disrupted.  

Another solution to take a long hard look at the advertisements that are being made and put on display.  If we were to have a better understanding of how to portray each gender without hypersexuality and stereotyping everything.  Perhaps more gender neutral advertisements will help combat against patriarchy and end the long run of sexism riddled advertisements. With gender neutral advertisements we can get rid of the stigmas that come with patriarchy.