The Pervasiveness of Sexism and Racism in Ad's

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 

Beauty and the Beast of Advertising. Los Angeles: The Center  of Media and Values, 1989                                   

Sawyer, Mark.(2009, October 14) "Commentary: Blackface is Never Okay" retrieved from: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/10/14/sawyer.blackface/