Toxic Media

Michelle Wong

MEDIA 384

Toxic Advertisement

     We might not realize the overwhelming amount of advertisements in media. “We are exposed to over 1500 ads a day, constituting perhaps the most powerful education source in society.”(Kilbourne 121) Without advertisements, websites, magazines, newspapers, media in general will not survive, and sadly, advertisements directly contributes to problems with toxic media. 

       An example would be the Ms. Magazine. This magazine is to liberate and empower women, so it is hypocritical to include ads about beauty, but it was impossible for the magazine to function without ads. Though, Ms. tried to include ads for the sake of communication between the readers and advertisers, in hope to change and improve the advertisement game. The magazine tried to incorporate other ads, such as technology ads or car ads, but these companies believed that women were incapable of using their products, so they were skeptical of Ms. When the representatives of the magazine finally got invited to a car show, in hopes of looking for sponsors, they realized something alarming. “…the only women around the technology displays are seminude models serving champagne.” (Steinem 115) In order to sell products, women are stripped of their clothes, to be sexualized, and to be placed in a room full of male consumers. So, this pushes the idea that selling something effectively requires a naked female. 

Take away the car scene, and let’s transition to an everyday setting, a restaurant. An article in Ms. magazine, it said, “There is also the rise of the “breastaurant,” chain establishments featuring young, attractive servers in revealing uniforms.” Even restaurants are trying to sell their products by using bodies of women. A very famous example, Hooters, where they require employees to wear absurdly short shorts and overly tight shirts that expose their breasts. This is a form of advertisement in reality that's not even on a screen. The message that this sends not only shows that society only values those who provide their bodies, but also only value those who are youthful, and it’s a sin to age.

Waitresses at Hooters.

     Products sold in advertisements are also accustomed to beauty myths and standards. For example the Virginia Slims. Emphasizing on slims, the cigarette is created for women, that supports the idea of rebellion and independence, also trying to signify elegance and sophistication. The shape of the cigarette is not in any way a coincidence in the message Virginia Slims try to convey. It is trying to advocate the idea “…desired social trait of slimness.” (Kellner 129) In an ad, there is a slogan on the breast of a thin young woman, “Decisions are easy. When I get to fork on the road, I eat.” Bordo argues, “Presumably, without those forks in the road, she might forget to eat entirely.” (Bordo 101)

Virginia Slim Ad "Decisions are easy. When I get to a fork in the road, I eat" 

We instill poor values onto young girls that damage their development with these types of subliminal messages. Kilbourne points out that the two types of women that are portrayed in ads are housewives and the sex doll. Ads for cleaning products target housewives, throwing them back in their “rightful” positions to cleaning, the only thing they contain value for. Then you have a youthful, skinny, and pretty sex object that “…feel their desirability and lovability are contingent upon physical perfection.” (Kilbourne, 122) This urges girls to believe that in order to be valued, they’d have to follow their patriarchal roles and descriptions, which creates eating disorders and mental health problems. 

When we think women suffer from the influences of advertisements, we should consider those women who are not straight to be victimized in a different way. Different from other groups, “…lesbians have not been easily identifiable as a social group anyways.” (Clark 143) They are a consumer pool that doesn’t attract advertisers to knowledge their existence. But, they do apply the technique, “gay window”, to discretely attract the lesbian and gay market. But, one dilemma the lesbian community faces is the fact that they have to comply with the rebellious, "I don’t care how I look" expectation, while, being drowned with advertisements about beauty and elegance. 
  I am surrounded with media influence everyday with the technology we are provided. I always loved Seventeen when I was growing up. As a child, my mind was simple. I didn’t know what was the hidden messages behind these powerful images, except for the fact that there were beautiful white thin girls in a magazine that I idolized. Although this magazine is so influential to young women, it's just a magazine to that sells beauty as value, and filled with ads that sell products that “give” those values. With no surprise, Seventeen is owned by the Hearst Corporation which also owns Cosmopolitan, another magazine that sells the same agenda to an older group. Not to mention that the whole board of the corporation are white men. 

     A T.V. show that I love so dearly is Glee. I love Glee for the musical content and the fact that they feature a diverse group of students, even having an openly gay character on the main cast. But, in the pool of kids, they threw in cheerleaders that wear short skirts and their sexuality was always emphasized throughout the show. This show teaches viewers a whole lot of great values and morals. But just throwing in some sexualized female cheerleaders is problematic, considering that many young teenagers watches the show. The channel that airs this is Fox 5, a branch of Fox Entertainment, that is also in the same branch of Fox 5 News.

Cheerios of Glee.

  Young teenage girls are fragile because they are learning and growing. This is the market that advertisers want to attract because they’ll become loyal consumers as they grow older. So, it is no surprise that in young adult magazines, there are plenty of ads selling beauty products with thin women. This is extremely distracting for young girls’ growth. “Mass communication has made possible a kind of nationally distributed peer pressure that erodes private and individuals values and standards.” (Kilbourne, 122) 

  It seems to be that media are always playing upon insecurities and vulnerability of women. To be a heavy consumer of media is inevitable in 2017, and it is horrifying for people who are unable to filter out these messages. Media is a medium that communicates a message, and poor examples of media send toxic messages to women. How do we try to alleviate the poor messages media sends us, when media is plagued with it? 

Citations:

Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley: U of California, 1993. Print. : pp. 101
Steinem, Gloria. “Sex, Lies and Advertising.” pp. 115
Kilbourne, Jean. “Beauty and the Beast of Advertising”. pp. 121-122
Kellner, Douglas. “Reading Images Critically: Toward a Postmodern Pedagogy.” pp. 129
Clark, Danae. “Commodity Lesbianism.” pp. 143