Images

When discussing the role of advertising in today's culture, which I am forced to reluctantly participate in, my first instinct is always to begin with "Barbara Kruger..." I understand now that my attempt to align my argument with Kruger's critiques is simultaneously an acknowledgement of the majority. I evoke the name 'Kruger' as a defense mechanism to protect me from the multitude of trash positioned opposite her work.

"I shop therefore I am" by Barbara Kruger

In his book, Provocateur: Images of Women and Minorities in Advertising, Anthony Cortese writes that, "advertisers targeting women consumers subscribe to very limited notions of what constitutes femininity... and, consequently, 'feminine' buying patterns" (52). Women need to fit into neat, little boxes so that the industry can maximize its profit. The idea of a woman with a strong sense of her own individual identity conflicts with advertisers' quick and easy appeal to the lowest common denominator. Cortese describes the concept of "the perfect provocateur". He considers her "an ideal image that arouses a feeling or reaction... [who] is not human; rather she is a form or hollow shell representing a  female figure" (54). A few years ago, Kotex released a series of advertisements meant to critique the notion that women are simply props available for use when a product needs a saleswoman.

It is a smart advertisement. I remembered it, so supposedly they succeeded in holding my attention but then the glaring contradiction arises - Kotex is still advertising a product and they are still assuming that this female identity will appeal to the woman consumer. They are condemning an act that they are quite clearly guilty of as well.

So why are women still limited to the role of the object even in a society where we are acutely aware of the marginalization? Naomi Wolf explains this phenomenon in her book, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women. She argues that, "Women are mere 'beauties' in men's culture so that culture can be kept male. When women in [our] culture show character, they are not desirable, as opposed to the desirable, artless ingenue" (59). The feminine identity has been defined by society, a patriarchy, as an other. Historically there are very few response to the Other. The most obvious is violence which the advertising industry uses more frequently than anyone should be comfortable with.

What are consumers supposed to gain from this image? Dear Valentino, a pretty red dress is infinitely less appealing when its wearer is being brutalized, and presumably by the police no less. Nothing about this image should say, go out and by that dress. It is also a premise that the company probably knew because I had to really strain my eyes to read the fine print. So, why is this image in circulation?

A second and equally popular response to the categorized Other is detached observation. When we encounters something different, a powerful accompanying urge to stare often overwhelms us. We look, and we compare, and we classify. Race, class and gender are all socially defined to ensure there will always be an us and a them - an eternal struggle. I didn't know what blackface was until I came to Hunter. It's just not something that crossed my consciousness before I was forced to watch an ancient video of a minstrel show so imagine my surprise when I saw that the fashion/advertising industry uses the concept to sell.

Gloria Steinem, whom I had also never heard about until fairly recently, writes about her days with Ms. Magazine in an essay entitled "Sex, Lies and Advertising". She details the constant struggle that she faced attempting to attract advertisers to the magazine. Amongst the many discouraging reports she describes, the then Estée Lauder refused to advertise in Ms. because according to him, the beauty products that are sold by the company are specifically for "the kept-woman mentality"(119). Obviously the readers of Ms. were hardened feminists who had tossed all their makeup into the roast along with their bras. Because of those societal labels, the anonymous readers of the magazine could never fit his ideal and thus they did not even deserve the opportunity to read his probably offensive sales pitch.

"Your body is a battleground" by Barbara Kruger

I used to buy Vogue, Harper's, Elle, Diva and Playboy. I distinctly remember walking into the pharmacy with my mum and begging her to pick up the latest copy of one or the other. I also remember being beyond annoyed when I inevitably hit the first advertisement. The percentage of substance versus texture in any of those listed above is simply astounding. Mum would roll her eyes, and I would explain that it's just what magazines do. This is normal. This is expected.

What is this advertisement selling? Is it selling the ability to contort one's body into a position that must get uncomfortable really quickly? According to Jean Kilbourne, in her article, "Beauty and the Beast of Advertising", advertisements like this one "sell values, images and concepts of success and worth, love and sexuality, popularity and normalcy" (121). Advertisers use their narrow views of the ideal woman to attract women who do not, will not, and should not fit that model. This mythical "ideal woman" is either a housewife, a sex symbol or a superhuman combination of the two. As with every established role in society, anyone who does not subscribe to the neatly defined categories presented to him or her or them, is immediately pushed to the outskirts of the culture being bred.

"Your comfort is my silence" by Barbara Kruger

How would a world look if people loudly rejected the ideals of the advertising industry? Edward Bernays, a pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, once said, "It is sometimes possible to change the attitudes of millions but impossible to change the attitude of one man" (quoted in Tye 102). In a crowd, we suffer the fate of the blind but one person's will is sure. I don't know how to change the advertising industry but I also don't think that is the first step to a full scale philosophical shift. I think that the consumers are the first wave. If I learnt anything from sitting outside an economics class once last semester, it is that a large profit driven industry follows the money so if the money has a change of heart, slowly the advertisers will follow. 

Works Cited:

Cortese, Anthony. Provocateur: Images of Women and Minorities in Advertising. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. Print.

Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used against Women. New York: W. Morrow, 1991. Print.

Tye, Larry. The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays & the Birth of Public Relations. New York: Crown, 1998. Print.

Steinem, Gloria. "Sex, Lies and Advertising"

Kilbourne, Jean. "Beauty and the Beast of Advertising"

Advertising and It's Influences...

Lately, there have been a lot of discussions on how women portrayed in advertising that is geared towards men.  It is true, that most of the times we are shown a female character that is objectified, devalued and sometimes even dehumanized. In those commercials women are depicted as an inferior and submissive type. In opposite, men are portrayed as masculine, powerful and controlling. Who’s fault is that? Should we blindly blame the media, it’s producers or maybe consumers?

In “Where the Girls Are", Susan Douglas argues, women love and hate the media at the same time, "in no small part because the media, simultaneously, love and hate women", by which she addresses the mixed messages that pop culture broadcasts to women (Douglas 12). As little girls, many of females might have adored TV commercials which represented women as flawless beauties with perfect bodies, hair and skin. As they got older, most had realized that these images aren’t amusing anymore. Almost every time a woman is shown  in the media, she was usually portrayed as a housewife or someone who is simply happy to own a bag, jewelry or piece of cosmetics. Unfortunately, many females consuming this media felt that the society was showing them what they were supposed to be and therefore,  felt extremely pressured to become what they have observed.

In order to understand why such media is being circulated among us, It is necessary to take a deeper look into the process of Media Production. Evidently, majority of the creators, producers and editors of the media are males. Therefore, extensive part of the media is male oriented and mostly made to be appealing to an average white heterosexual men.   Sex by itself,  is another factor that led to objectification of women. Advertisers instantly focused on women as sexual objects rather than women, once the they became aware of that “sexy” sells better. According Jean Kilbourne’s “Beauty and the Beast of Advertising, ”Female is generally presented as superwoman, who manages to do all the work at home and on the job (with the help of a product, of course, not of her husband or children or friends)” (Kilbourne 125).  Many companies also employed techniques that not only objectify women but also utilize their insecurities in order to sell their product. Kilbourne also wrote, “Advertisers are aware of their role and do not hesitate to take advantage of the insecurities and anxieties of young people, usually in the guise of offering solutions” (Kilbourne 129). This proves that the purpose of such pervasive media is to sell a product by shaping culture's sense of our everyday activities, such as dating, romance, sex, beauty and understanding of what is 'ideal' within society is.

Sexist media has a corrosive impact on our society and our perception of our place within. I can agree that some of the messages we see in daily media are not as damaging to adults but they have a greater effect on young children who most likely to take this images as instructive. Many of them see the images of people just like themselves or images of their peers, being rewarded with intimacy and romance for acting and dressing up in a very provocative way. Of course, there are feminist movements that could help develop a different population of true equality, but unfortunately, popular media had distorted the definition of feminism a long time ago. Naomi Wolf analyzed several editorials of early publications in 1848. Feminists in those publications were portrayed as “Unsexed women, who were too repulsive to find a husband. Women, that are entirely devoid of personal attraction” (Wolf 68). Did the perception of a feminist had changed nowadays? Probably not  too much.

It is hard to admit, but we are living in the world of Patriarchy. Many men don't even consciously identify with this term and as Bell Hooks states “Men who have heard and know the word usually associate it with women’s liberation, with feminism, and therefore dismiss it as irrelevant to their own experiences” (Hooks 17). In order to stop this pervasive course of sexism in media, first, we need to fix the root of the problem. It is essential to educate our younger population that there is no need for power hierarchies between men and women. We should break common gender rules and stop assigning specific products or behavior to male or female gender. Just as drinking beer doesn’t make a person more of man, putting makeup on doesn’t make one any more of a woman. We need to be aware of how serious the issue is and be concerned for our well-being as a society. As  media makers, we are especially involved in the process of social development. We have to stop using female bodies to advertise and sell products, stop being obsessed with flawless beauty which doesn’t exist.  Shaving with an expensive razor, drinking specific type of liquor or wearing particular brand  doesn’t automatically bring beautiful women around. We should advertise products by presenting the real product for its real values and benefits. Therefore, putting our societies values before our material interests is an essential step in creating healthy, sexist and stereotype free, truly equal community.

Works Cited

• “Beauty and the Beast of Advertising” - Jean Kilbourne"The More You
• “Patriarchy” - Bell Hooks
• “The MOre You Subtract The More You Add: Cutting Girls Down to Size" - Jean Kilbourne
• “The Beauty Myth, Culture” – Naomi Wolf
• “Where the Girls Are" - Susan Douglas
  
  

Additional Link: (10 most sexist ads of all times)

http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/10-sexist-ads-made-total-pigs-133401

Post #3: Advertising - Janis Mahnure

A woman is an object. That’s what we’ve been told since the dawn of time. We were made for the man. Even biblical stores explain how Adam came first and then Eve was created for him. John Berger in his piece Ways of Seeing says, “To be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men” (Berger 46). This object is belongs to men; this object is small. These two concepts of being made for men and being small, in a confined space, provides the basis of what the advertising industry perpetuates through sex, beauty, and power.

In Anthony Cortese’s article, Constructing Bodies, Deconstructing Sexism there is an ad with the caption “Quit using our cans to sell yours” (Cortese 50). This is an anti-ad but the necessity of it shows how much the advertising industry uses sex to sell goods- even beverages. We still see this everywhere, even in the video game industry. Grand Theft Auto, for example, is not geared to female consumers – it is geared to male gamers and therefore they place a very sexy female avatar on the cover of the game. Sex is used to sell anything and everything. Business Insider tells us thirty brands that use sex to sell. The first few are obvious from the billboards all over New York City. Just walk into Hollister during the warmer days and you’ll see this concept very clearly: males with muscles and abs standing out front, models inside just saying hello, dimmed lights to create a romantic mood except we can’t actually see how the clothes look, make a purchase and you’ll get a wonderful bag with a sexual image and not much clothes involved. And clothes isn’t the only thing sex sells:

In Sex, Lies and Advertising, Estee Lauder says their products are for “a kept-women mentality” (Steinmen 119). This concept of a “kept-women” basically refers to a women who cares about her body not necessarily in a health-conscious way, more about aesthetically pleasing to society. This society is of course the man's society. Her “beauty” should be “natural” and as Kilbourne says in Beauty and the Beast of Advertising, “beauty is something that comes from without” (Kilbourne 122).  Women are told they are ugly and need to be beautiful. Their artificial beauty is to appeal to the man and once again she is an object to place a mask upon.  A very “natural” mask that comes with a glow. However, beauty does not simply stop at the face. Kilbourne in The More You Subtract The More You Add: Cutting Girls Down to Size, discusses how normal physiological changes during adolescence result in increased body fat for women but these changes are considered undesirable by the culture. She says, “Imagine, girls made to feel so terrible about themselves that they would rather be dead than fat” (Kilbourne 134). Magazines always tell women to love their body, but make sure to constantly diet and excersize. “Eating for women were a priveledge” (Kilbourne 136). Even food ads promote the notion that women should be skinny. 

Power, or rather, male-power, is used in advertising in the most subtle of ways and most obnoxious of ways. Many advertisements use male dominance to sell even women products. Bell Hooks says that the women’s role is “to serve, to be weak” (Hooks 18). Naomi Wolf in her book Culture says, “Women are mere “beauties” in men’s culture so that the culture can be kept male” (Wolf 59). We see this in the following advertisements:

A women is an object. “Women are allowed a mind or a body but not both” (Wolf 59)

       The pop culture is not reflected by these advertisements – they are just there to show us what pop culture is supposed to be like. They tell us that we should be beautiful and flawless and prance into a bar full of masculine guys who will charm us with their power and authority. In reality, it’s just a Friday night where guys in washed out t-shirts stand outside a club catcalling women or inside watching a football game and women with five inch heels are just trying to have a good time with girl friends or scoring a one-night-stand.

       We don’t need to promote women in negative or subservient light, nor do we need to promote sex to sell clothes. Make ads focused on typography and abstract art design. Make holistic ads that promote family life. Beer ads don’t need women, they can just show a group of men playing poker and drinking beer, good old ‘guy time’. Or a scene from How I Met Your Mother of the friends at a bar making jokes about each other (of course, not have all of the actors white). Make beauty ads that promote “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” and feeling like a temporary princess, not flawlessness. And definitely not have stick-skinny girls – spread some variety, have plus size models, and medium-sized models, and show some flabs here and there. Society feels uncomfortable to see a girl with a few small rolls on her belly but if all the magazines showed it enough times, maybe things would change.

Works Cited:

“Ways of Seeing”- John Berger

"The More You Subtract The More You Add: Cutting Girls Down to Size" - Jean Kilbourne

“Patriarchy” - Bell Hooks

“Constructed Bodies, Deconstructing Ads Sexism in Advertising” - Anthony Cortese

“Sex Lies and Advertising” - Gloria Steinem Ms. Magazine

“Beauty and the Beast of Advertising” - Jean Kilbourne

“The Beauty Myth, Culture” – Naomi Wolf

Post 3 Advertisement Influences

“Women are allowed a mind or a body but not both.”

-Naomi Wolf     

     This very well written quote is the general message that advertisements send to women. As we all know, advertisements are a common sight in our everyday lives. It can be as obvious as a Gucci billboard or as discrete as a subtle product suggestion in the article of your favorite magazine. Advertisement has a greater purpose than selling products though; advertisement as we know it remains loyal to sexism, racism, and power hierarchies. 

This is a well known ad from the 1960's to promote kitchen appliances. This ad displays a clear use of sexism in advertisement. 

This image is an example of sexism, racism, and power hierarchies by portraying 'the bride' as a prized slave to the dominant male.

     The purpose of the examples above is to reinforce the dominate patriarchal system within the household which is problematic in itself, but I think the bigger issue is that it does so with the disguise of a happy submissive woman/wife. Because advertisements are literally everywhere, the house is no longer a safe place where a woman can use as an escape from the poisonous messages in ads. These messages include instilling the idea  "in consumers the cultural assumptions that men are dominant and women are passive and subordinate” (Cortese 53). 

     The purpose of these ads are to maintain the power struggles between men and women. It does so by oversexualizing women and turning them into objects for men. “Ad deconstruction reveals a pattern of symbolic and institutionalized sexism” (Cortese 45).  “A woman is conditioned to view her face as a mask and her body as an object, as things separate from and more important than her real self” (Kilbourne 122). Pervasive images in advertisements have unintended but highly detrimental effects on women. This relates back to Berger's idea of how “the ‘ideal’ spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him” (64).  Women internalize this way of thinking as it is represented in the media and as a result the cycle is only perpetualized. 

     “Aggression is a learned behavior. Media violence teaches us aggression as children" (Cortese 67). Cortese suggests that violence is portrayed throughout advertisements. However, learned behaviors via ads is not only limited to violence. The anorexic models that are glorified on magazine covers make thinness the ultimate desire for women although is it unrealistic and extremely unhealthy. The lack of alternative body types make women think that it is even more critical to fit into this literally tiny, tiny category. The images that make it onto covers most often are not natural. “Advertising creates a mythical…world in which no one is ever ugly, overweight, poor...The image is artificial and can only be achieved artificially" (Kilbourne 122). 

     "Authority figures were almost always male, even in ads for products that only women used” (Steinem 113). Changing this would be an effective first step to breaking down the patriarchal society that we are surrounded in. I think that if more women in the advertisement industry are getting a say in how women are portrayed in the media, there will be a greater chance of change. Secondly, the models in front of the camera need to look more realistic and look truly natural as oppose to how men want them to look. Ads “are really projecting gender display-the ways in which we think men and women behave-not the ways they actually do behave. Such portrayals or images are not reflective of social reality" (Cortese 52). This idea of our media being reflective of social reality is key to rehabilitating the advertisement industry because is directly affects the messages being sent to the audience. We should find models that are at a healthy weight and find other ways to pose that do not glorify sex. If there is an abundance of realistic advertisements, that will slowly become the norm. 

      Sources:

     John Berger,  Ways of Seeing

     Anthony J. Cortese,  Constructed Bodies

     Jean Kilbourne, Beauty Beast

     Gloria Steinem,  Sex, Lies and Advertising

     Naomi Wolf, Culture

final project proposal

            For the final project I’m thinking of making a sort of video collage of rape cases from all around the globe. Sexual assault id a huge deal and in many places the victim, the girl, is always blamed. She always has to face the two most ridiculous questions of “why were you there? And why were you dressed as so?” in some places not only are the girls condemned but polices officials are so messed up that they refuse to investigate the case because “she was asking for it.” As if she went up to the guy and told him to rape her.

            Through the video I want to depict the sorrows and struggles of a rape victim. The challenges she faces and the “new” life that awaits her. Good luck to me because I can picture exactly how I want the final project to turn out but I have no clue as to how to go about it.