A Woman's place in Advertising- Post 3

                    In the world of advertising, the intent is to manipulate and endorse a product or an item so that the consumers may feel compelled to buy it.  To almost feel as if they cannot live without it.  With that said, in the world of advertising the tactics that are used to sell or lure the consumer is questionable or darn right absurd.  Things like gender discrimination, and the male gaze are very much prevalent in the world of advertising today.  Sexism and patriarchy are generally what advertising is centered around.  The idea of catching the consumer with tricky tactics like race discrimination, male gaze, body image manipulation and much more, is what advertising is made up of.  By any means necessary is what advertising is centered around.
                  In today's wold, advertising has evolved in such a way that it's effect on the consumer has grown .  There seems to be no limit on the tactics that are being used to sell the products.  We live in a society that is so overly advertised that we are bombarded with ads wherever we go.  You can't step out of your house without an ad being shoved down your throat.  There are billboards, buses, train platforms, everywhere on social media, television commercials, I mean everywhere you look these days, some new product is finding a way into your life, and into your thought pattern.  Advertising comes across to us in such a way that it affects our psyche.  The images that we consumers are bombarded with are of thin, beautiful, flawless women who cause the consumer to feel that if they get this product, maybe they can look like that.  It plays into our (the consumers) insecurities.  The ads that are always centered around women are always centered around unattainable perfection,  What they don't tell us (the consumers) is that almost all of these ads are photo shopped to attain a perfect beauty.  But what they do say is that this cream or whatever the product may be that they are trying to sell will make look like the model who is in the ad.  As described by Jean Killbourne in Beauty and the Beast of Advertising, "They sell values a, 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."  This in a nutshell is what advertisers do on a daily basis.

They teach people that body they are in is not acceptable and that they can keep what they love as long as they change themselves while doing so to "look perfect."

They make everything too sexual to catch peoples attention.

                    The manipulation tactics that are used in advertising has created a society of already damaged individuals.  It is responsible for women never feeling good enough, never feeling like they measure up.  Women have developed eating disorders and are doing multiple things to themselves to to attain an unattainable body.  There is no such thing as perfect, yet the women who are displayed in the ads look near to what we all deam perfect would look like.  Because of this, women everywhere have fallen victim to this form of manipulation.  Women in today's society has fallen into thinking that by changing parts of their of their bodies through whatever means, whether through exercise, surgery, and/or diets one would fall victim to it,  When women cant attain the perfect body, or look, they feel insecure, turning on themselves, as well as their bodies.  They are made to feel a sense of contempt and failure towards themselves.  This is a tactic that advertisers use to get their product sold.  "Women will buy more things if they are kept in a self-hating, never-feeling, hungry, and sexually insecure state of being aspiring beauties."(Wolf, 52)
                     "Photographs of models are often trimmed with scissors, 'computer imaging'-the controversial new technology that tampers with photographic reality- has been used for years." (Wolf, 83).  Photoshop is designed to create this is unrealistic image of what a woman should look like.  It leads a lot of women to feel inferior and less than other women,  To always compare themselves to what the person in the ad looks like.  If you ask me, Photoshop is what is damaging our society today.  The ads portray skinny models who are photo shopped to be even thinner all the time, and portrays all these unattainable bodies as ideal.
                      Advertising is also famous for racism and sexism.  There are so many advertisements purposely designed and exclude blacks.  Advertisements are directed towards the white public.  If ever other races apart from the white race, like a person of color for instance, it will play into the stereotypes.  People of other races are often placed there as ploys to create a sense of equality.  Advertisement is sexist in that there are always ads to sell men products that show women as sexual objects who are supposed to buy the product to please or lure their male interest in.  These ads are created for the male gaze. "Advertising has become sexual harassment." (Cortese, 30) Advertisements seem to use women strictly as sex objects that are solely designed to please men.  To entertainment, serve and be objects just to validate their manhood.  Cortese says this in chapter three, Constructed Bodies, Deconstructing Ads, "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- the way in which we think men and women behave- not the ways they actually do behave," (Killbourne, 1989)

All ads targeted towards men.

                       There are so many things that are wrong with advertising.  In today's world we are all guilty of allowing this because we as a society accept these images that are given to us.  We all fall victim to these ads and play right into the trap that the advertisers place for us.  We as people must take a stand and not fall victim by these blatant plays that advertisers put in place for us.