Atrocious Advertising

Claudia Fareri
Women and Media
Doris Cacoilo
18 March 2017

Advertising is a steady churning machine that produces millions of pieces of content each year. And although some of us may turn a blind eye to its presence, its effects can still leave lasting impressions on others. According to "Beauty and the Beast of Advertising" Jean Kilbourne says “the ads sell a 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. Sometimes they sell addictions” (121). On the surface, it may seem that ads are promoting products but if you take a closer look, ads promote ideas about what to wear, what to like and essentially who to be.

Gigi Hadid poses for Stuart Weitzman's Spring 17 Campaign.

In this example, Gigi Hadid strips naked except for a pair of Stuart Weitzman boots in her Spring 17 ad. Many of the time, girls are dressed provocatively in ads because advertisers are aware that sex sells and that "their desirability and lovability are contingent upon physical perfection" (Kilbourne, 122). Gigi Hadid is yet another tall, skinny, blonde haired and blue eyed model that ads are constantly featuring; it is ads like these tell young woman what the standard for beauty is. And it is in these ads that "women are shown almost exclusively as housewives or sex objects" (Kilbourne, 122). As a result, women start to feel ashamed for how they look: they aren't tall enough, skinny enough, or perfect enough. Surely, these ads are just a fraction of the bigger picture. Ads illustrate the values of popular culture that society indulges in. In television shows, music videos, magazines and on social media, popular culture sets the agenda of what society should be focused on. In turn, this causes girls to feel the pressure and strive to look like the select few models through plastic surgery or weight loss.

Women depicted in magazines.

In the article "Sex, Lies and Advertising", Gloria Steinem recalls her struggle in trying to find companies who will put ads in her magazine Ms. in order to keep it alive. In one instance, she has lunch with the president of Estee Lauder, Mr. Leonard Lauder. When asked about including ads from his company in her magazine, Mr. Lauder refused and explained how "Ms. readers are not our women. They're not interested in things like fragrance and blush-on" (Steinem, 119). Even when a magazine focuses and centers around women, it takes more than just that. In Mr. Lauder's eyes, Ms. readers were not woman enough, in the sense that they didn't follow the gender role that women are believed to follow such as wearing makeup and being feminine. This shows how ads are strategic and manipulative by feeding off of the stereotypes and gender roles in society that encourages people to continue accepting something that isn't right.

But despite the negative impact it leaves on young women and society in terms of your body and who you should be, ads still exists as our "U.S society invests over $102 billion a year into advertising" (Kellner, 127). They may be small and subtle but are powerful and controls the minds of society. In the article "Toward a Postmodern Pedagogy", Douglas Kellner discusses the influence of ads towards the sale of cigarettes in the 1950s. During this time, Marlboro created a campaign that associated its cigarette with masculinity and being a "real man", a "Marlboro Man". Marlboro included a picture of a cowboy to emphasize manliness and independence and over time, has become a cultural symbol in America (Kellner, 127). Now, a Marlboro cigarette instantly associates itself to this idea that smoking one of their cigarettes makes someone a manly man and reinforces this gender role that society already holds. We can see the same effect in this social experiment for chewing gum.

In this social experiment, pairs of identical twins sit in front of an audience, with one twin chewing gum and the other sitting still. A member from the audience listens to a list of questions such as "which one seems like he has more friends?" or "which one gets invited to more parties?" and chooses the twin they thought best fit the answer. After the experiment is over, the results showed that 73% of people preferred the twin who chewed gum. Going off the idea about the Marlboro man, this gum company highlighted the benefits of their product through associating it with desirable features. When people want to chew a piece of gum, they'll pick Beldent and be reminded of the affirmations it provides such as being more popular and generally more preferred. Ads are powerful in the influence it has on the thoughts we have about ourselves along with how we represent ourselves with the clothes we wear and products we use. Buying a Marlboro cigarette doesn't simply mean you want a smoke, it means you want to show your independence as a man. Likewise, buying Beldent chewing gum doesn't mean you want to freshen your breath but that you want to be seen as the cool kid.

Many of the media outlets I consume don't incorporate as many ads as I would expect. On social media, I spend my time on Instagram and YouTube. Instagram is owned by Facebook, which is another platform I use as well. On Instagram, I notice that ads that pop up are related to items I have searched for previously or items that I may be interested in, which I find happens often on Facebook as well. On YouTube, I enjoy watching vlogs or makeup tutorials and often find that my homepage is contained with videos related to the ones I've watched in the past or may be interested in watching. As for ads on YouTube, I downloaded the Google plug-in called Ad Block which blocks all ads on YouTube. Not only am I saving time from viewing these ads but it steers me away from the message it's trying to sell me. For entertainment, I turn to Netflix, which is a publicly traded company owned by numerous investment funds, institutions and private investors. Again, just like on other platforms, it suggests related shows and movies I should watch based on my previous choices. What I enjoy most about Netflix is how I can stream a show or movie without an interruptions from ads or commercials. Finally, for news, I check The NY Times, which is owned by the Ochs-Sulzberger family since 1896. I enjoy that one company has been owned by a single entity for a long amount of time because this gives the newspaper consistency. I don't find may ads on The NY Times website - just ads for themselves.  

Works Cited

Kilbourne, Jean. Beauty and the Beast of Advertising. Advertising (pp. 121-125).

Kellner, Douglas. Reading Images Critically: Toward a Postmodern Pedagogy. Advertising (pp. 126-132)

Steinem, Gloria. Sex, Lies and Advertising. Advertising (pp. 112-120).