Women in Advertising

     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.