Gender in Advertising

“You can never be too rich or too thin, girls are told. This mass delusion sells a lot of products. It also causes enormous suffering, involving girls in false quests for power and control…”

Every minute of everyday we are surrounded by advertisements. Throughout our upbringings, we are bombarded with the different ideals and tactics of corporations through their advertisements. Ads influence so much of our daily lives. Besides showing the latest trends, they influence young people and help them decide how to view the opposite sex and their own gender as well. Kilbourne exemplifies this in the piece, ‘Beauty and the Beast of Advertising’ when she states, “the most powerful educational force in society.” Because advertising is something we are constantly surrounded by and it is a huge part of our culture, children learn from it and take its messages as a lesson on how issues of gender and sexuality translate into their lives.

            Images of women in advertising have developed over time. Societal and political issues have influenced and shaped many changes in advertisements and how women are portrayed. In class we discussed advertising during World War II and then how it quickly changed after that. During the war, women were shown as strong individuals that had to step up and do their part (i.e. Rosie the Riveter). Later, when men returned home from the war, tides changed and women regressed so much in society and in how they were portrayed. Women became the noble housewives and their appearance; both physically and in their homes were advertised to women’s most coveted successes.

After many struggles, women moved away from this stereotype. Then began the beauty war: a war that pins women against her innermost self. It advertises the perfect woman, also known as the unachievable. It is a non-stop battle that women cannot overcome. In recent times, the image of women in ads has been one of overt sexuality and objectification. Kilbourne defines the ideal woman in our society, stating that she is  "a mannequin, a shell. Conventional beauty is her only attribute... she has no lines or wrinkles... no scars or blemishes." Cortese also helps define advertisers and their different strategies in the piece, ‘Constructed Bodies.’ One of his most powerful quotes is when he states, “What kind of representations does advertising produce? It creates a mythical, WASP-oriented world in which no one is ever ugly, overweight, poor, toiling, or physically or mentally disabled..” This truly shows how advertisers attempt to appeal to their audiences. All your troubles will go away if you buy our product. Despite the advances of women in society, women constantly struggle with this battle to be perfect. The effect this has on young girls is immense and many girls develop body image issues to attempt to fulfill what they think they need to be. Boys are affected too. They see women being sexualized and that’s the image they expect from the girls around them. It is a cycle of influence that shapes how girls view themselves and how others view them, which also relates back to Berger and his article about the male gaze.

Personally, Kilbourne’s "The More You Subtract The More You Add: Cutting Girls Down to Size" was powerful in expressing advertising’s affects on young women. “Primarily girls are told by advertisers that what is most important about them is their perfume, their clothing, their bodies, their beauty. Their "essence" is their underwear.” Advertisers want girls to feel like they cannot live without their product. They do this by belittling the reader and making them feel like if they get this product, they will be one step closer to achieving the image of perfection. Kilbourne further states, “Even more destructively, they get the message that this is possible, that, with enough effort and self-sacrifice, they can achieve this ideal. Thus many girls spend enormous amounts of time and energy attempting to achieve something that is not only trivial but also completely unattainable.” In Kilbourne’s other piece, Beauty and the Beast of Advertising, she acknowledges that adolescence is the target audience because they are vulnerable. Advertisers play with this vulnerability and make girls feel insignificant. Girls go to extremes to try to achieve this perfect image. Ads tell us “we can and should remake our bodies into perfect commodities.” Young girls develop eating disorders, habits of self-harm, and other issues to deal with the hatred they have for their appearances.

 What does this all mean? Women, especially young women need to become more educated on advertisements as misrepresentations. We need to teach them to be aware of the beauty myth, instead of letting them fall victims to it. The problem is that these strategies are deep routed. For example, in ‘Reading Images Critically,’ Kellner states, “In fact, Lucky Strikes carried out a successful advertising campaign in the 1930s which associated smoking with weight reduction…“Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet.” These images have been successful for a long time. The best way to combat this is to create a new advertsing strategy that appeals to young girls that depict women’s body in a positive way. Dove’s campaign ‘Love the skin you’re in’ is an excellent example of this. Let’s educate young girls so that they understand advertiser’s tactics and outsmart them by not letting their messages dictate their purchases, understanding that they are not objects, and help them develop healthy habits with their own bodies.

Instead of this...

Let's try this...

educating girls on the realities of advertising.

  

Demi Lovato's campaign with Seventeen Magazine: 

Love is Louder than the pressure to be prefect.

Cortese, Anthony. “Constructed Bodies, Deconstructing Ads: Sexism in Advertising.” Provocateur Images of Women and Minorities in Advertising. 2004.  

Kellner, Douglas. “Reading Images Critically Toward a Postmodern Pedagogy.” Gender, Race and Class in Media. 2003.

Kilbourne, Jean. “The More You Subtract, The More You Add Cutting Girls Down To Size.” “Beauty and the Beast of Advertising." Gender, Race and Class in Media. 2003.