The Greatest Story Every Told

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the advertising companies is how well they entrap you into buying their products merely by telling you that you are not good enough, that perfection is attainable if only you were to acquire that which they sell. It’s a good strategy. By preying on the insecurities and supposed shortcomings, by creating this idea of perfection in the minds of the buyer advertising companies can create an image that their targeted audience can aspire to be. An idea that no matter how many times they try or how many products they purchase will they will never be able to make reality, because were you to be completely satisfied there would be no need for further products and for that matter advertising.

                 

In Sex, Lies and Advertising, Gloria Steinem depicts a vicious world where advertising preys on the least suspecting to enter the deeper recesses of their psyches. As she states, “I thought then that our main problem would be the imagery in ads themselves. Carmakers were still draping blondes in evening gowns over the hoods like ornaments. Authority figures were almost always male, even in ads for products that only women used.” The problem with the advertisement world to Steinem, lies that they don’t accurately advertise for the people that actually would like to buy their products. At least for the work she wanted to achieve in her Ms. magazine advertisers refused to create a picture of a woman that liked among many things cars, technology, and that refused to represent them in stronger roles instead of the “depressed housewives standing beside piles of dirty dishes [promising] to get them back to work.”

                 

The problem as Jean Kilbourne also so adeptly but it, at least when it comes to women and adverting, is that “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, constantly in need of alteration, improvement and disguise,” this idea that a woman cannot be completely whole, that, she herself, as she is, is not sufficient enough being. A woman is always to be dissatisfied with herself no matter what she does to achieve “the look” proposed by the advertising.  As Wolf states in her essay Culture, “if the public woman is stigmatized as too “pretty” she’s a threat, a rival—or simply not serious; if derided as too “ugly,” one risks tarring oneself with the same brush by identifying oneself with her agenda.”  It is a sad no win situation for women on either account. She cannot be too pretty because she would not be taken seriously and if she is too ugly it is almost as if she were of no worth. There cannot be multifaceted women because she would then be a threat. And because this idea of women being treated never as a whole complex being it translates very well into advertising.

                

 Perhaps looking into the Cortese, Constructed Bodies we can discern that women’s portrayal in comparison to males is greatly in part due to or deeply imbedded notions of gender roles. “Since gender roles are so pervasive and deeply ingrained in our psyche through cultural transmission, cultural patterns of gender interaction often seem to be taken for granted as natural and, consequently, unchangeable. These cultural images of masculinity and femininity have a great deal of power over us.” Women always seem to play the role being subservient to men unless they’re hyper sexualized and still they are merely for display for men to look at never for their own enjoyment and perhaps if they feel such enjoyment is because they’ve been so ingrained to view what comes as male pleasure for their own.

              

  

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 If we take the following video game promotional video, we can be mistaken in thinking that the women are actually in power. Yet if we look further we can see that, as Cortese states, “cultural definitions of masculinity and femininity encourage violence or receptivity to it.” The women are beautiful and armed, they all are voluptuous and with not one foreseeable flaw. They are dangerous. Yet regardless of their number and they’re perceived strength they are taken out single handedly by one man in almost religious matter. Eternal peace, as if putting dogs down.

                 

This is the problem with advertising, regardless of its supposed target audience it seems that the audience that’s always to be pleased is the men. Following the cultural norms of men are powerful and women are meant to be the price we fall prey to these very same ideas in advertising, forgetting the larger scheme of personalities and people of different attribute that populate our world. For advertising to be less detrimental I would say we need for reality and less perfection, less fantasy so that we may finally grow satisfied with ourselves.

Cited:

Image: http://realitychecktruthhurts.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/artifacts-bad-advertisements-or-good/

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKlEjPMXC1I

Readings: 

Cortese, Constructed Bodies

Wolf, Culture

Kilbourne, Beauty Beast

Gloria Steinem, Sex, Lies and Advertising