For the final project, I will create an informational video
regarding sexism in the video game industry. There have been cases in
which video games were blamed for increasing violence among children and young
adults. More often than not video games are blamed for being too violent;
they are not being critiqued as strongly for being sexist. If it is possible
for video game to increase violence among individuals then wouldn't video games
also be able to also influence our perceptions of gender as well? Gamers spend
many hours absorbing what they are playing, its hard to believe that when the
game gets turned off they forget about everything they saw.
Art from GTA5 when loading, pretty disrespectful.
There are tons of games that have sexism, the most common
being Grand Theft Auto 5. When we think of sexism in video games we usually
think about GTA5, for picking up hookers, banging them, and then killing them
to take your money back. This game seems to support misogyny because there
are no positive images of woman. There are plenty of other games that
also treat women with disrespect; sexualized violence includes beating, raping
and killing women. In the video games you can do whatever you want and get away
with it. Video games should have these actions come with consequences because
some people might be under the impression that this type of behavior easy to
get away with. Someone may even think that treating women as they are in video
games might seem normal.
Princess Peach- Mario- Popular Damsel in Distress
In the video game industry there are lots of examples of
sexism that don't revolve around sexual violence. One common role of women that
persist in games is the role of the "damsel in distress", as seen in
the Mario franchise. There is the typical useless female that can’t do anything
by herself and she is always asking to be saved by the male protagonist. What
is up with game developers using that's as the plot for their game. If
women are not the damsel in distress, then they tend to be overly sexualized.
In fighting games particularly this is a phenomenon that holds true most of the
time. The animated versions of women tend to have huge breast and minimal or
tight clothing. Then we have the rare releases of video games that have a lead
female role, but that too, is hyper sexualized to the point where you question
if the games is centered on the plot or the fantasies that some gamers have.
Lead Female roles tend to be overly sexualized - Lollipop Chainsaw
"To all the girls that think you're ugly because you're not a size 0, you're the beautiful one," Gaga shared a quote of inspiration on Twitter. "It's society who's ugly."
Lady Gaga on BTW Tour
Lady GaGa has been one of my biggest inspirations since the first time I heard her music on the radio. I was always amazed of her great physique and wondered if this was something done out of choice or because of the industry demanding her to maintain a specific look. However, despite her glamorous thin physique in her early career, in recent months Lady GaGa has gained a noticeable amount of weight and she has been receiving a lot of scrutiny for it. Although this is not the first time she has been attacked by the media because of gaining weight, she knew exactly what to say to shut down all the negative comments surfing the web about her physique. On her website she started a body revolution, inspiring those who looked up to her to accept their bodies, regardless of excess weight, scars and other imperfections. She also added on her website "Today I join the BODY REVOLUTION. To inspire Bravery. And BREED some m$therf**king COMPASION", she then adds in a later post "Be brave and celebrate with us your 'perceived flaws', as society tells us". She is someone who has not allowed the media to influence her and the way she lives her life, and this is an example that should be employed by many other main stream and influential people, to not sell an artificial and almost unattainable look.
In Beauty and the Beast of Advertising Jil Kilbourne states "Advertising creates a mythical mostly white world in which people are rarely ugly, overweight, poor, struggling, or disabled, either physically or mentally." Imagine a world of no imperfections and that every time you see someone, they've got no wrinkles, blemishes, or scars, and that everything about that person is as Beyonce says in one of her songs - FLAWLESS! The reality is that it is hard to imagine a world where imperfections are not present. Advertising and the effects it has on body image particularly on women has been an alarming issue that dates back for as long as advertising has been around. Women have been programmed to think that how they look has a huge impact on their lives in terms of success and worth. I would like to agree with the film we saw in class about body image earlier in the semester. Among the many concepts that were brought up, one that resinatedwith me was the idea that advertising can be compared to religion in how people worship saints and strive to embody them as a religious practice of perfection. In essence women emulate this idea in the context in which they worship the images shown in the media of the ideal slender, light skin and barbie doll image. Most of the images that girls see at an adolescent age set the platform for how these images will affect them in their adulthood. The following two reading explores the many forms of advertising that have place women on a platform where she is judged and scrutinized for the way that she looks. "Body Messages and Meanings" and "Hunger as Ideology" by Susan Bordo.
Figure 1
Lillian Russell
most photographed
Susan Bordo explores advertising and the negative influence it has on society for both men and women, but mostly on women. In the reading we were presented with various real ads that have been published in the past, she carefully deconstructs them and exposes the subtle messages embedded in them by imposing a false message. In order to explain how much our society has shifted gears in defining what is considered beautiful and accepted, Susan brings up Lillian Russell (figure 1), to help explain the evolution of beauty, she states that this woman was one of the most photographed woman in America. Ms. Russell was admired for her hearty appetite, ample body and doesn't fail to mention that at the height of her popularity she was 200 pounds. So here is where Susan questions what happened to the times when it was accepted and considered beautiful for women to be comfortable with their weight and not feel forced to conform to the ideal skinny model look?
Lets explore how the ideal image of beauty has shifted over time.
Women portrayed 1900's-1950
Women Portrayed 1960's - Present
The idea of curved woman being beautiful shifted to not being so attractive after the slim frame supermodel came into the picture, from that point on an emphasis on being skinny and maintaining this image increased, year after year more women were excluded because they did not meet this new standard of beauty. While some women resisted the influence of these images, some fell in the trap and some have spent a fortune on companies that sell products which claim to improve imperfections and promote a healthier and beautiful YOU! The following two campaigns (Victoria Secret and Dove) were placed side by side in effort to expose the demands society places on women. While Victoria is promoting a "Love my Body" Campaign, Dove created a campaign to include the outsiders who do not fit in this category the "Real Beauty". Many campaigns including those like Victoria Secret tend to teach only one lesson to the viewer, and that is sexy and beautiful can only come in one package. Companies such as Dove, create an environment where all forms of beauty are represented. The problem is that there is a lack of ads that tend to be inclusive.
Victoria Secret beauty Ad VS. Dove beauty Ad.
The following video is quite disturbing because its a perfect example of society's obsession with being skinny and beautiful and equating that with success and acceptance. The video below video shows women putting themselves through a series of tasks (plastic surgery, cosmetic dentistry, physical training, personal coaching) in effort to obtain the ideal beauty and to be accepted by others as one of the contestants confesses "Im afraid nobody else would ever love me". Women are encouraged to obtain an artificial type of beauty because they believe this will lead them to happiness.
The constant bombarding of ads that exclude all body types tend to instill a certain belief on women, and in the "Body Messages and Body Meaning" the author mentions the thin commandments that main stream media tends to instill on women:
if you are not think you are not attractive
being thin is more important than being healthy
you must buy clothes, cut your hair, take laxatives, starve yourself, do anything to make yourself look thinner
Thou shall not eat without feeling guilty
Thou shall not eat fattening foods without punishing oneself afterwards
Thou shall count calories and restrict intake accordingly
What the scale says is the most important thing
Losing weight is good/Gaining weight is bad
You can never be too thin
Being thin and not eating are true signs of will power and success.
One of our readings also talks about how some celebrities are not the best role models when it comes to fighting off this unattainable image. On more recent news the talk show host Wendy Williams talks about body image and photoshop and bring up a recent controversy surrounding Beyonce.
Recently Beyonce received a lot of criticism over an image she photoshopped in effort to create the infamous thigh gap. Wendy Williams was concerned with how many of her 19 million followers on Instagram are young girls who look up to her and see this image which seems like a regular everyday image posted on Instagram as a reality, and how many of these girls actually try to achieve this look that not even Beyonce in real life has.
Beyonce Thigh Gap scandal
Other celebrities who have been highly influential in our society who are contributors to this ideal image that they themselves do not even possess are Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, Kim Kardashian and Kate Winslet among many others. feel free to click on the following link to see more photos and read about other celebrity enhanced photos.
Figure 1 Figure 2
Figure 1:
Mariah Carey Performing her new
single from her album. She is placed
sided by side her edited album cover.
Figure 2:
Britney Spears side by side enhanced photo of herself
in her latest music video.
Referring back to the Lady GaGa example of embracing the natural beauty, more celebrities who are influential and have a large following should be more conscious about the messages they put out in the images they publish of themselves in the media. Images that promote an unhealthy and dangerous lifestyle for many women who look up to them.
Works Cited:
Bordo, Susan. Unbereable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body. University of California, 1993. Kilbourne, Jean, "Beauty and the Beast of Advertising." Media & Values. Diana George & John Trimbur(Eds.), (1999)
A pair of children's books teaches boys how to be clever and teaches girls how to be gorgeous.
Toy Ads are divided, guiding children's eyes with color and reiterating gender roles.
Sexism Within Toy Advertisements
Advertisers
waste no time implementing sexism within ads. The idea of acceptable behavior
has to be introduced at a young age for gender roles to feel like second
nature. In toy advertisements, girls are grooming dolls, caring for babies, baking and cleaning, while boys are building, shooting and being commanding. “Along
with our parents, the mass media raised us, entertained us, comforted us,
deceived us, disciplined us, told us what we could do and told us what we
couldn’t.” (Douglas,13) When children see advertisements they are
solely focused on the toy; they are unknowingly absorbing the messages that are being conveyed
to them on a daily basis.
Once
the toy or the game is bought for the child, gender roles are being
reiterated each time that the toy is played with. As a child I baked with my easy-bake-oven, I
fed my baby- dolls and I styled the hair on My Little Pony’s, Barbie’s and Kenya dolls. I took the appearance of my dolls
seriously by constantly changing their clothes and I would play imaginary games like house, school and
shopping. I also played with video
games and cars but I was fully aware that I was playing with the boys. I was
also aware that I had been"invited" by the boys to play “boy games" with them.
Who remembers Dream Phone? A guessing game for girls age nine and up, in which the player talks to different boys on the phone and gathers clues to find out who has a crush on her.
Barbie is thin and pretty and Ken is her fit and handsome boyfriend.
Kenya came with "magic lotion" aka a perm that straightened her hair.
The content of male attention and body image remain the same but the images are different; like these magazine covers. Taylor Swift on Teen Vogue and Glamour and Pink on Seventeen and Cosmopolitan.
Sexist Advertisements Effect Adolescent Girls Once a girl enters adolescence the work has already been done. Through years of toys, games, film, music and television, teenage girls are already aware that they are to value their appearance. There
are advertisements that are targeted specifically at teenage girls, such as
ads in a magazine like Seventeen or Teen Vouge, but most of the time teenage girls are subjected
to ads that target adult women. This is very dangerous because
these advertisements use sex to convey the message that women only value their
appearance for the approval and for the acceptance of men. A teenager looking at an ad for women
may feel that in real life she has to display her sexuality to be accepted by boys.
The teenage girl whose own body is experiencing a
biological change may develop an unhealthy attitude about her appearance
because she is constantly comparing herself to the women that she see’s in ads.
Comparing herself to the photoshopped women that do not even look like
themselves. “They are in the process of learning their values and roles and
developing their self-concepts. Most teenagers are sensitive to peer pressure
and find it difficult to resist or even question the dominant cultural messages
perpetuated and reinforced by the media.” (Kilbourne, 122)
"Adolescents are particularly vulnerable,
however, because they are new and inexperienced consumers and are the prime
targets of many advertisements.” (Kilbourne, 121)
Teenage girls are bombarded with ads that tell
them that they need to be thin, beautiful and sexy.Imagine what these images can do to a young girl
that does not look like what she sees in ads. Not only will she feel insecure
and insufficient but she will also feel unworthy of being accepted as she is.
She will feel that if she is not a reflection of the images around her, then she has to physically change her self for love and attention. “Cultivating
a thinner body offers some hope of control and success to a young woman with a
poor self-image and overwhelming personal problems that have no easy
solutions.” (Kilbourne, 132).
Eating disorders like anorexia, bulimia and binge-eating are an unintended effect of advertisements. There are many factors that contribute to eating disorders but unhealthy standards of what a beautiful woman is supposed to embody causes young girls to feel that they can not physically measure up to those standards.“Advertising does not cause eating problems, of course, anymore than it causes alcoholism. However, these images certainly contribute to the body-hatred so many young women feel and to some of the resulting eating problems…Advertising does promote abusive and abnormal attitudes about eating, drinking and thinness. It thus provides fertile soil for these obsessions to take root in and creates a climate of denial in which theses diseases flourish.” (Kilbourne,135) I heard about thinspo about a year ago. Thinspo's inspire girls to stay thin. Check out this thinspo tumblr in the link below http://get-thinspo.tumblr.com
Women Spend to Gain
Advertisements use “flaws” as an effective way to
sell products. Reiterating to women that they are never enough and that they
need “that” particular product to fill the void. I think that unconsciously
women buy products so that they can feel accepted by men. Women adorn
themselves with men in mind. Knowing that they will be surveyed by men,they dress accordingly for attention and spend money trying to
look like the unattainable images in advertisements. “Women are buying their
gender identity but it remains described in accordance with the masculinity at
the heart of patriarchy and the corporate power of the beauty industry.”(Gunter and Wykes, 211)
Racism in Advertisements
Model Ondria Hardin in blackface as"African Queen" for Numero magazine in 2013
Does
it make any sense to use brown makeup on a white model “blackface” to sell
products when there is an array of black models that already have naturally brown
skin? White models are the majority within the fashion industry; this is reflected on runways and in magazines,this is also a direct correlation of white designers not having
black people in mind when they make their products. Simply put, white designers
do not want black people buying their clothes. Yet, blackface is used in some
advertisements when a “black” or an “African” theme is being used for a magazine spread.This is very
twisted and racist. “Blackface is one of the most pernicious and painful stereotypes about
people of African descent. Like old blackface minstrelsy, when you can't find
blacks you think are worthy to play the part, you simply blacken up white
actors or, in this case, models. The message: Real black people aren't good
enough at being themselves.” (Sawyer). There are also instances in which
black models faces are drastically darkened with makeup for ads. Again this is
racist. Advertisers want the dark skin color of a black person but they may
not want the particular features of that person, so the “acceptable” features
are darkened to go along with the theme of the ad. “For very complex
reasons, a sort of racist ‘common sense’ has become pervasive in our society.
And the media frequently work from this common sense, taking it as their
base-line without questioning it”(Hall,8)
“
Since (like gender) race appears to be ‘given’ by Nature, racism is one of the
most profoundly ‘naturalised’ of existing ideologies.” (Hall, 9) There are
ads that use skin color to reiterate messages of good and bad meaning white and
black. The color black represents things that are bad, evil and dirty while the
color white represents things that are good, pure and clean. There are also ads
that sexualize the skin of black people to sell products.
A Dove soap Ad uses a black woman as the before representation and a white woman as the after representation. An American Apparel Ad darkens a black model's body "Sweeter than candy. Better than cake"
Alternative
Advertising Strategies
The
female body undoubtedly needs to stop being used as a means to sell products
and as a way to sell women a false sense of self. Realistically, this is very
difficult to counteract because sexism is so engrained within our culture. In
most cases, ads that attempt to go against traditional advertisement ultimately
end up doing the very same thing. They use the female body to sell an idea and
to essentially sell products. “Girls who want to escape the stereotypes are viewed with
glee by advertisers, who rush to offer them, as always, power via products.”
(Kilbourne,150). “The solution to any problem always has to be a product.
Change, transformation, is thus inevitably shallow and moronic, rather than
meaningful and transcendent.” (Kilbourne,153) I honestly do not know if
it is possible to have alternative ads without those ads trying to pose an
agenda onto people thus trying to sell products. Roll reversal in some alternative ad's are also ineffective. Simply putting women in a sexist position toward men and labeling it as power does not deal with the issues of traditional advertisements.
Swedish toy Ad's show boys and girls playing together.
This
is why it is significant that alternative advertising begin in the early
stages; when children are learning gender roles. Instead of showing boys and
girls separately in toy commercials displaying gender specific characteristics,
perhaps, it would be effective to show boys and girls playing together. There
is nothing wrong with being loud, sensitive, aggressive, adventurous, nurturing,and loving. However, it is dangerous to convey to children that only boys can be
masculine and only girls can be feminine. Boys and girls should have a healthy
balance of both masculinity and femininity, they should be able to display their emotions without feeling like they are doing something wrong.
Works Cited: Douglas, Susan J. Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with Mass Media. New York: Random House, 1995 Gunter, Barrie and Wykes, Maggie. The Media and Body Images: If Looks Could Kill. London: SAGE, 2005
Hall, Stuart. The White of their Eyes: Racist Ideologies and the Media. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1981
Kilbourne, Jean."The More You Subtract the More You Add" Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising. New York: The Free Press, 1999
In Susan J. Douglas' Where the Girls Are, she cites her accounts, injustices and the
affects of feminism inside and out of the media. The war on women in the media, Douglas'
thoughtful observation on the exclusion of Blacks regarding equality, and the television role
models given to young girls helps to define Where the Girls Are as one of the most important
books in feminist literature.
Douglas states, "The war that has been raging in the media is not a simplistic war
against women but a complex struggle between feminism and antifeminism that has reflected,
reinforced, and exaggerated our culture's ambivalence about women's roles for over thirty-five
years. (pp. 12-13)"
Those who believe that the media spearheaded the campaign for soiling
the reputation of the feminist may be correct, but it was women who made their agenda a
success. My generation (Generation X), like Douglas', was taught that feminists were angry,
unattractive women who couldn't get dates; that women should never worry about the way a
man looked when seeking a mate (the total opposite of what boys are taught); and women are
incomplete without men. Generation X's ideas on women and antifeminists would not be
complete if we omitted their definition of a "good girl": virgins, quiet women and never being
sure of one's self. The notion that the media has almost incited an allegorical riot between
feminism and antifeminism as Douglas suggests is not far-fetched. Generation X got their
indoctrinations (I was an exception, for my mother was a feminist) from their families and
images in the media. As the "unattractive," unhappy feminists were still making a little
headway in their mission--creating sexual harassment laws and addressing domestic violence--
the "attractive," scantily-dressed antifeminists were appearing in rock and rap videos hanging
all over men like Christmas-tree ornaments and happy because they were the chosen ones (so it
seemed). Rap was just taking off in my adolescence and my male counterparts quickly latched
on to 2 Live Crew and NWA (Niggas W/ Attitudes), calling women bitches and hoes. But,
Gloria Steinem, mother of the feminist movement, never declared women shouldn't have the
right to appear half naked in music videos. And it didn't mean the women that were allowing
Dr. Dre to smack their asses on MTV and BET were not feminists. What it did indicate was
that I had no other choice but to take my mother's advice and be a Black woman the way I
wanted to be and not by anyone else's definition as to what that was supposed to be. But,
would that cause me to forfeit the right to be protected?
A very honest observation by Douglas was her description of the race-biasness on
education: "...many of our elders were fighting for improved educational systems, including
greater access to a college education, the understanding was that they were pushing these
reforms not just for boys but for all kids--well, white kids, anyway. (pp. 22-23)" It was so
refreshing to hear a White woman finally acknowledge that when Americans (particularly
White Americans) say they want all to succeed, they usually just mean people who look like
them. The feminist movement prides themselves on fighting for the equality of all women, but
some believed the movement did not address Black women, many of them [Black women]
being maids or holding down other low-paying jobs. I don't believe Steinem's agenda included
Black women either. It was confirmed for me when in 2012, online publication, The Onion, called 9 year-old Academy Award-nominated Black actress, Quvenzhane Wallis a "cunt."
Steinem did not call for an apology from The Onion, but a few months later expressed her
outrage over the media calling Kim Kardashian "fat."
As everybody knows, the main purpose of
advertising is to try and sell the consumer a
product. Advertising is everywhere regardless of where you live. You
step out the door and you’re bombarded by ads on billboards, train platforms,
television, watching a video, or on almost any social media platform. It has
become harder and harder to get away from all these ads and from when you are
first exposed to them until now you’ve found it best to just skip the channel
and ignore them. At the same, through experience and understanding, there comes
the realization that there is something completely wrong about these ads and
apparently they aren’t just trying to sell you a product. As Jean Kilbourne states in “Beauty and the
Beast of Advertising”, “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”. These ads also contribute to
the sexism and body image issues that are rampant in our society.
No pores, No wrinkles, Not humanely possible
All these images we encounter, whether in glossy magazines or on billboards,of flawless and thin women have this major impact because of the culture we live in today, as Kilbourne states in her article "The More You Subtract the More You Add", which influences us into remaking "our bodies into perfect commodities". Many of these ads also do a magnificent
job of exploiting women and their insecurities. There are countless numbers of
ads for makeup and anti- aging products and of course most these ads not only
try to sell you their product but also the idea of unattainable perfection. You
can’t and won’t ever be perfect but if you buy a pore minimizer cream or this
anti- aging serum then you’ll get close to perfection, because apparently that
is who women should be, a pore less, young, flawless entity.
When advertisers only use one type of
body in their ads it creates insecurity and disillusions. Women become insecure
about themselves because they don’t look like these models and they become
desperate to conform to this ideal. They begin to ago through great lengths to
change themselves, some choose plastic surgery and others choose more drastic
measures. As Kilbourne states, women begin to view their “face as mask and body
as object, things separate and more important than real self”, they are always
in search of improvement, and are made to feel ashamed of herself. These images
also affect men who become disillusioned by these perfect women in ads and
begin to judge women they know in real life.
Advertisers also do a wonderful job of exploiting the female body got their gain. They constantly use naked models in their advertisements to sell their products, sometimes with the product not actually present in their ads. There are countless number of cologne and perfume ads with models just barely dressed advertising for the fragrance as seen in numerous Calvin Klein cologne ads.
As a consumer I want advertisers to
know that the strategies they use in advertising isn’t in anyway appealing.
Using woman to sell their products by objectifying and humiliating them is in
no way attracting me as a consumer. Instead of relying on disgusting
advertising to attract consumers, advertisers should pay attention to not only
the white heterosexual male but also to everyone else in the world, including
women. In order to sell me a product, I need to first be represented in these ads. It would be best to see women of all shapes,sizes, ethnicities, and all flawed because that is who we are. Work Cited
Kilbourne, Jean. Beauty and the Beast of Advertising. Killbourne, Jean. "The More You Subtract, the More You Add Cutting Girls Down to Size." The More You Subtract, the More You Add Cutting Girls Down to Size (1999): 1-15. Killbourne Copyright.
Advertising in media today is a form of violence against women in particular, against their genetic dispositions. Everyday we're bombarded with thousands of images, especially here in NYC, on screens, in the subways, in magazines, television, and movies, you name it. We're constantly pressured to consume and the way that endless cycle of consumption is achieved is through insecurity in ourselves and through degradation of our value as humans. We are made to believe we are physically inadequate because of the altered images we compare ourselves to in these ads and commercials Women are de-humanized as well into objects that men use for either sexual or entertainment purposes.
When the ideal image of the women was constructed as "very slender, white, blonde, heterosexual, and young," the possibility of all women reaching that expectation is impossible, especially when you are not born blonde, white, or with a fast metabolism (Wykes and Gunter, 211). But the media makes it even tougher on black women. When women of color are portrayed in ads, their hair is straight, their skin is light, or they have features that approximate that white women ideal of beauty. They are given this air of exoticism, and one of the ways this is done is by placing them in a jungle setting.
World Wildlife Fundraising Campaign Ad
They are made to look an exotic animal by placing them in animalistic positions and environments. These representations of the black race in the media do nothing but exacerbate racist stereotypes in our culture and keep it alive in insidious ways such as this.
Worst of all is that it is all intentional. Women in general are dehumanized violently. Kilbourne says they are "dismembered in commercials, their bodies separated into parts in need of change or improvement" (124). Different parts of our bodies are torn apart, modified, and sold as reality, as what me must achieve. According the The American Society of Plastic Surgeon's 2013 Plastic Surgery Statistics Report, between 2000 and 2013, tummy tucks rose by 78%, breast implants by 70%, upper arm lifts by 4470%, and Botox procedures by 757%. Our bodies are supposed to be perfect, the way they are in ads and commercials, or else we are not attractive and we cannot attract men and we will not be happy.
Nikon ad comparing the COOLPIX 3100,
a compact digital camera, to the
old, inferior model COOLPIX 2100.
These messages drive us to frankenstein madness, changing parts of our body however we can to fit this ideal through exercise, surgery, and diets. And when we don't achieve them? We are made to feel contempt for ourselves, ashamed of our bodies. That insecurity is what propels that vicious consumer cycle because women "will buy more things if they are kept in the self-hating, ever-failing, hungry, and sexually insecure state of being aspiring 'beauties'" (Wolf, 52).
The other form of violent dehumanization is the ways in which women are a vehicle for sexual entertainment. "The perfect provocateur is not human; rather, she is a form or hollow shell representing a female figure" (Cortese, 54). These big, perky boobs we strive for all for men's pleasure and it what is most used to sell everything. Big butts and boobs are turned into visually arousing objects. The women who possess them do not hold any value in the advertisements other than their promise of sex:
Axe Shower Gel ad showing the objectification of
women's bodies
New improved Axe Shower Gel ad promoting the sexualization of women's bodies
Women become objects for the sexual imagination of men, but also just objects in general to sell most male products. When we are turned into a bottle of beer, we are no longer a human:
Michelob, an American Pale Ale, advertisement
converting a women's body into a beer bottle.
We become an object that a man drinks for entertainment purposes which is a fitting metaphor for the way our bodies are fervently consumed by the male gaze. And we drink it up. Men's expectations of women rise and become as critical as the way we view ourselves. We're suffocated on all sides. This Autumn Winter 2013 Campaign Promo video for Agent Provocateur directed by Penelope Cruz,for example, exhibits a male fantasy of women with perfectly similar bodies in lingerie parading around a mansion, waiting to be chosen by a man. It is more disturbing to know that it is a woman directing this because she is delivering the message to women about men's fantasies and what they are. For me, that message says, "get the model body, then spend $300 on lingerie, and then wait to be chosen, and when you are, be a woman and serve his needs." It's sad because these videos make us want to be sexy, and if we do not feel sexy, then we feel self-conscious and unworthy of love and happiness.
Autumn Winter 2013 Campaign Promo video for Agent Provocateur directed by Penelope Cruz
Personally, I used to be obsessed sort of with reaching this impossible image, and I beat myself up over not being able to be it. But certain circumstances in my life made me realize that the way I look is not the door to success or happiness. My ambitions are much greater than that and the things I achieve are what bring me most pleasure in life and measure what I am capable of. I grew up being called anorexic because of my thinness, and i could not understand how models would want to be the very thing i was ridiculed for. Then, I ate excessively to become more accepted. Now, I simply nourish my body with healthy foods and exercise because it makes me feel good and strong, not because it will bring anyone else pleasure. I also stopped watching television and I read books instead of magazines, and I feel like flushing out all the advertising and commercial bullshit is the reason I'm not so affected on an obsessive level. I come from a culture that is obsessed with having big butts and huge boobs, but I'm a small Colombian girl that's "lucky that her breasts are small and humble," and his happy with her body. If this was my alternative, then I feel like it's an alternative for anyone else as well. Just realizing how edited these images are and focusing on you instead of how everyone else sees you is effective.
Obesity is a complicated disease influenced by poverty, genetic disposition, racism, and many other factors. And, I feel like the media's solution to it is making women hate themselves, when it should be changing our culture about food and the way we eat. However, this is the opposite of what they want, and instead of forcing change on ourselves, we should raise hell on the cultural landscape the media industry has created by forcing change through our own "anti-advertisments," such as in Jean Kilbourne's Documentary Killing Us Softly 4, where she shows a Dep Advertisement (shown below) and reads what it would sound like if it were used the same way for men in a Calvin Klein's Denim advertisement.
Dep advertisement, "Your breasts may be too big, too saggy, too pert, too flat, too full, too far apart, too close together, too A-cup, too lopsided, too jiggly, too pale, too padded, too pointy, too pendulous, or just two mosquito bites. But with Dep styling products, at least you can have your hair the way you want it. Make the most of what you've got."
"Your penis might be too small, too droopy, too limp, too lop-sided, too narrow, too fat, too pale, too pointy, too blunt, or just two-inches. But at least you can have a great pair of jeans." - Kilbourne's response to the Calvin Klein ad using the same words as the Dep advertisement."
Being humorous and attacking men is not going to solve anything, but it opens our eyes to how only women have it that bad. That tactic on men's jeans, would never see the light of day because that degradation is saved for women. It enrages us against the violence of the media on women, their bodies, and their self-esteem. That rage can be used to spark more rage and create a chain-reaction of changes.
by Vanessa Rodriguez
Resources
Wykes, Maggie, and Barrie Gunter. "Conclusion: Body Messages and Body Meanings." The Media and Body Image: If Looks Could Kill. London: SAGE Publications Ltd., 2005. 204-22. SAGE knowledge. Web. 9 Nov. 2014.
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons.2013 Plastic Surgery Statistics Report. 2013.
Kilbourne, Jean. “Beauty… and the Beast of Advertising.” Reading
Culture. Ed. Diana George and John Trimbur. 4th ed. New York:
Longman, 2001. 121-125
Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth. New York: Doubleday, 1991. Print.
Cortese, Anthony Joseph Paul. Provocateur: Images Of Women And Minorities In Advertising. Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008. Print.
Jhally, Sut, Jean Kilbourne, and David Rabinovitz. Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising's Image of Women. Northampton, MA: Media Education Foundation, 2010.
