Advertising

Ekaterine Kervalishvili
Professor Cacoilo

Media 386

18 March 2017

Advertising

Advertising is a billion dollar industry which does more than just sell the products. On average a person is exposed to more than thousand ads per day, whether consciously or unconsciously these affects all of us. Jean Kilbourne in her article “Beauty and the Beast of Advertising” says: “The ads sell great deal more than products. They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth, love and sexuality, popularity and normalcy. They tell us who we are and who we should be”(121). The advertising industry reinforces patriarchal ideology where men are portrayed as strong and powerful while women are usually submissive and weak. The advertising tries to create the world where everyone is pretty and popular, where people who are overweight, ugly, disable don’t exist. This idea reinforces the stereotypes and is especially damaging for the teenagers and adolescents who are still in the process of development and therefore the most vulnerable. Kilbourne argues that if women don’t fit into the ideals that are dictated by the advertisement they feel “ashamed” and “guilty.” The certain type of a woman dominates the ads. She is the embodiment of the beauty ideals which are constructed by the advertisers.  Kilbourne says: “ She is thin, generally tall and long-legged, and above all she is young”(122).

These Dolce&Gabbana ad is the example of how advertisement tries to make women seem submissive sex objects while men are portrayed as dominant and somewhat violent. In this ad we can see the dismemberment of woman’s body. The focus is on her legs and perfectly made up face. She is held down by the man this suggests male superiority. The ad also glorifies the violence. This ad is an example of how advertising often times reduces women to objects and normalizes the abuse. 

The relationship between advertisement and the media can be described as co-dependent. The media, especially print media, relies on advertisement and ad revenue and corporation rely on the media outlets to distribute their products. Gloria Steinem in her article “Sex Lies and Advertising” illustrates the point of how corporation often times tried to control the content of her magazine Ms. Since Ms. was womens’ magazine corporations were hesitant to direct ads at women. Steinem discussed her attempted to convince technology corporations to advertise in Ms. magazine and in returned she received the response: “But women don’t understand technology”(114). This shows how advertisers stereotype the readers in this case women. Steinem’s article speaks to the gender hierarchy in the advertising world. Ms magazine was women magazine therefore corporations were less inclined in directing their product to female market. 

Advertising companies to some degree dictate the new trends. Douglas Kellner in his article “Reading Images Critically Toward a Postmodern Pedagogy” stated: “ Careful scrutiny of magazine, television, and other imagistic ads indicate that it is overwhelmingly persuasive and symbolic and its images not only attempt to sell the product by associating them with certain socially desirable qualities, but they sell as well a worldview, lifestyle, and value system congruent with the imperative of consumer capitalism”(127). Kellner analyzed Virginia slim commercials directed towards female market and compared it to the Marlboro ads aimed toward men. Virginia slim tried to connects socially desirable traits associated with women to their cigarettes. They typically portrayed modern slim women and the caption said “you’ve come a long way baby” these captions suggests that it is modern and “cool” to smoke. It helped establish new trend in women which was smoking. Kellner says: “It associated Virginia Slims with modernity, social progress and the desired social trait to slimness.”(129) Once again we can see the attempt by the corporation to dictate the certain kinds of beauty ideals. Unlike Virginia Slims, Marlboro associated smoking cigarettes with masculinity. The advertisers for both companies further reinforced and dictated already existing gender stereotypes. The distinction clearly illustrates the gender roles men and women have in the society, However Virginia Slims undergoes transformation In 1988 campaign where we can see new version of women in ads. Kellner described the women as no longer “smiley”, wifely, “cute”, “wholesome.” Kellner stated: “The new Virginia Slims women, however,  completely dominates the scene, is the epitome of style and power”(129). This ad offers women more power and is anti-patriarchal The new ad somewhat blurs the existing gender stereotype by dressing the woman in man’s clothes.

The media I consume on daily basis are mostly ad free. I use ad-block on my computer which blocks ads on all web-sites. Currently I’m not on any social media therefore I have even less exposure to the advertising however when I had facebook account ads that I was exposed to where usually related to the items I regularly searched on the web. For the news I read outlet such as NYT. It is owned by Arthur Orchs Sulzberger and Huffington Post its parent company is AOL. I access the news outlets through apple’s news App which is ad free. TV shows and films I stream on Netflix the company that is owned by numerous investment funds and private investors it is also ad free. My daily exposure to advertisement is bare minimum. 

   Both Kellner and Kilbourne state that advertising has come a long way. Kilbourne says: “There has been some changes in the images of women.”(125) The corporation and advertisers are more and more inclined to illustrate the women in their ads and commercial who diverge from the classical beauty standards and don’t fit into the patriarchal idea of beauty. One of the examples is the big brand like Nike who endorsed the transgender athlete in one of their commercials however there is still long way to go towards equality.

Works Cited

1. Kilbourne, Jean. “Beauty and the Beast of Advertising.” pp. 121-125.

2. Steinem, Gloria. “Sex, Lies and Advertising.” pp. 112-120.

3. Kellner, Douglas. “Reading Images Critically: Toward a Postmodern Pedagogy.” pp. 126-132.