The Patriarchal Economy of Ads

Capitalist corporations have the main objective of producing profits and nothing else. They use advertising to promote sales of their products that help them achieve this goal. Advertising strategies are designed to point out and exacerbate the emotional insecurities of the target audience, making their products capable of solving the “problem”.

Capitalizing on insecurities

In addition to capitalism, we live in a society that has cultivated patriarchal norms for centuries. Being that this mode of social structure has been carry down from generation to generation, it is not surprising to find that corporations are run by men – of course with a extremely little input from women during this contemporary times. Thus, in a world dominated by men, a capitalist system that caters to men is not an absurd idea either; in fact, capitalism caters to men and thus serves to support patriarchy.

Consequently, advertising reflects this established order. Ads, as in the rest of the media, objectify women in order to achieve different outcomes.  For instance, one desired outcome is to use women for the “male gaze”; the other may be targeting women to sell products to them that “promise” to provide a desirable trait. As a result, an area where women have been scrutinized severely is their appearances. At all times they are being questioned about their fashion, their hair, their nails, and their bodies in general. Ads are a constant remainder of these physical attributes and other emotional and behavioral idealized attitudes. As Kilbourne states in Beauty and the Beast of Advertising, “Women are constantly exhorted to emulate this ideal, to feel ashamed and guilty if the fail, and to feel that their desirability and lovability are contingent upon physical perfection” (Kilbourne, 122).

The idealized beauty that women are told to achieved

This patriarchal discourse results in sexism and racism. Opposed to the masculine patriarchy there is femininity. A constant bombard of text and images in ads targeting women, the messages connote the existence of an inferior gender, female. Women are portrait subjugated to the powers of men, in addition to their own existence. In ads, they are the weak entities that balance out the authoritative omnipresence of their male counterpart. In The More You Subtract, The More You Add, Kilbourne states, “we learn a great deal about the disparate power of males and females simply through the body language and poses of advertising. Women, especially young women, are generally subservient to men in ads, through both size and position” (Kilbourne, 141). Furthermore, Wykes and Gunter affirm, “for women language represents them according to the interests of those who ‘represent’ rather than according to women themselves. At the outset of the twenty-first century those representation are also discontinuous – frail bur fertile; sexual and maternal, career-girl and geisha; independent but arm-candy; flirtatious but faithful” (Wykes, 208).

This type of imagery teaches us a great deal about gender roles. Ads are communicating messages at all times on our daily routines. Departing from this form of patriarchy economy, advertising tells us through images and text our desirable behavior according to our assigned gender. Anthony Cortese says, “advertising sells much more than products; it sells values and cultural representations such as success and sexuality” (Cortese, 45). These values and cultural representations are repeated over and over through out the spectrum of media. Since we are kids, we are in constant contact with these messages in ads, assimilating and learning from the imagery and text displayed. Unconsciously, we are learning the expectations that the patriarchal economy is placing on us. For instances, we learned at a very young age that the ideal female beauty is that one in terms of the white race: light skin, blonde strait hair, small facial features, and thin body. This ideal of beauty promotes a racist environment where other races don’t fit the idealized model. It is only those colored and ethnic women that have straight hair and small facial and body features that may be portrait in ads.

The role of man and women according to ads

Therefore, the images and text, that advertising portraits, carry out the culture of a patriarchal economy. As Wykes and Gunter state in The media and body image: if looks could kill, “such discourses are part of the technology of power – capitalist and patriarchal but also heterosexual, white western and also part of subjective consciousness” (Wykes, 208).

It is important to develop media literacy and learn to critically assess advertising. Community based organizations are a good start to promote a healthier relationship towards advertising. The goal is to help people to be aware of the dysfunctional connection we all have with the images and text in ads. Campaigns that expose the patriarchal discourse in media can help to create awareness of the negative influence of ads. The message should address directly the problem, patriarchy, and not the economic system, capitalism, because it is patriarchal messages that result in sexism and racism. Initiatives like the Center for Media Literacy or genderads.com are an example of creating tools to educate communities about the negative messages in ads. However, this type of initiatives must be brought into schools, colleges, community fairs, and other places where people gather to effectively reach a large amount of people.

Works cited:

Cortese, Anthony J. Provocateur: images of women and minorities in advertising

Lanham, MD. USA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008.

Kilbourne, J. (1989). Beauty and the beast of advertising. In Media and Values. Center

for Media and Values. Los Angeles, CA. 1989.

Kilbourne, Jean. The More You Subtract, the More You Add Cutting Girls Down to Size.

(1999): 1-15. Kilbourne Copyright. Web. 24 Oct. 2014.

Wykes, Maggie and Gunter, Barrie. The media and body image: if looks could kill.

Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Publisher London; SAGE, 2005.