"Because she is forced to concentrate on the minutiae of her bodily parts, a woman is never free of self-consciousness. She is never quite satisfied, and never secure, for desperate, unending absorption in the drive for perfect appearance- call it feminine vanity- is the ultimate restriction on freedom of mind."- Susan Brownmiller, 1985
WOmen as consumers; women as objects
Most of us can picture popular logos including McDonalds, Starbucks, and Nike, even if we don’t use those products. We know certain jingles by heart, like the “five dollar footlong” offered by Subway sandwiches, “Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat Bar”, Kay Diamonds’ “every Kiss begins with Kay” and the ever popular Oscar Mayer weiner song. Advertising is on public transportation, grocery carts, and online services. Americans are exposed to at least three thousand ads everyday. Even if we don’t pay direct attention to them, these ads are powerfully influential, even if just on the unconscious level (Kilbourne, p. 58). Jean Kilbourne in her 1999 book Can’t Buy My Love explains how companies spend over $200 billion a year on advertising, over $250,000 to produce an average television commercial and another $250,000 to air it (pp. 33-34). She explains (p. 33) that advertisers want us to believe that they have no influence on us, but that is simply not the case. Advertising supports more than 60 percent of magazine and newspaper production and almost 100 percent of the electronic media. Over $40 billion a year in ad revenue is generated for television and radio and over $30 billion for magazines and newspapers (pp. 34-35). Advertisers know how to target their audiences, and are interested in people ages eighteen to forty-nine who live in or near a city. Interestingly, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman a show that was popular among older, more rural viewers (and had a strong female lead) was cancelled in 1998 because it couldn’t command the higher advertising rates paid for younger, richer audiences (Kilbourne, p. 35).
We have all heard how the media and advertising can also affect girls’ and womens’ self-image, but what exactly does that mean and why does it matter so much? Dr. Kilbourne gives us some excellent examples in Can’t Buy My Love. She explains how when girls enter adolescence, they face a series of losses, including loss of self-confidence, loss of ambition, loss of her own “voice”, and loss of uniqueness often felt in childhood (p. 129). “Social psychologists have pointed out in recent years, adolescent girls in America are afflicted with a range of problems, including low self-esteem, eating disorders, binge drinking, date rape and other dating violence, teen pregnancy, and a rise in cigarette smoking” (Kilbourne, p. 129). Advertising may not be helping these issues by exposing girls to “beauty ideal” and introducing them to various products. Dr. Kilbourne noted that teenage girls spend over $4 billion annually on cosmetics alone (p. 131). Advertisers tell girls that what is most important about them is “their perfume, their clothing, their bodies, their beauty” (Kilbourne, p. 132). Dr. Kilbourne also explains that “women are especially vulnerable because our bodies have been objectified and commodified for so long...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” (p. 132).
yeah we know, "sex Sells"
Dr. Kilbourne says that sex in advertising is more about “disconnection and distance than connection and closeness...more often about power than passion” (p. 270). The main goal is usually power over another, either by the physical dominance or preferred status of men, or the power of female beauty and sexuality. Products can help “men conquer and women endure” (Kilbourne, p. 271). Sex in advertising is “pornographic because it “dehumanizes and objectifies people, especially women, and because it fetishes products” (Kilbourne, p. 271). Ads even use pornograhpic themes like bondage, sadomasochism and sexual exploitation of children to sell their products (Kilbourne, p, 271). These ads encourage male domination and violence and teach them to be forceful and dominate, while telling women to be attracted to hostile and indifferent men while encouraging boys to become these men (Kilbourne, pp. 272-273). Men are even taught to never take “No” for an answer; a perfume as even says “Apply generously to your neck so he can smell the scent as you shake your head ‘no’” (Kilbourne, p. 273). These ads are very troublesome considering that women are too often the victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault. Our society holds onto the idea that females are responsible when sex goes wrong; yet indifference in a man is sexy and violence can be downright erotic (Kilbourne, p. 275). Some ads use violence to sell their products, sometimes with women being dead or in the process of being killed. We actually become numb to these images, just like we tune out the daily reports of women being raped, battered and killed (Kilbourne, p. 277). These ads don’t directly cause the violence, of course, but the objectification of women can create a climate where violence is widespread. “Turning a human being into a thing, an object, is almost always the first step toward justifying violence against a person. It is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to be violent toward someone we think of as an equal, someone we have empathy with, but it is very easy to abuse a thing. We see this with racism, with homophobia. The person becomes an object and violence is inevitable” (Kilbourne, p. 278). This is a problem when we live in a country with the highest sexual assault rate of any industrialized nation in the world (Kilbourne, p. 280). A 1993 report by the American Association of University found that 76 percent of female students in grades eight to eleven and 56 percent of male students said they had been sexually harassed in school. One high-school junior explained how the boys pick on her and call her names, and she puts up with it because she “has no choice” and her teachers tell her that the boys do that because they “think she’s pretty” (Kilbourne, p. 287). Many other female students- ranging from elementary to high school- have reported being touched, fondled, or assaulted by male classmates. Many of them don’t report these instances for fear of being blamed or ostracized by their peers (Kilbourne, p. 287). This has long term effects for women, with abuse and assault often setting them up to harm themselves, turn to alcohol or drugs, or get involved with an abusive partner in the future (Kilbourne, p. 288).
These ads prove that "sex sells", even when the product being marketed has nothing to do with sex!
active men/passive women: the "male gaze" IN ACTION
Another problem with advertising is that many ads “portray girls and young women in very passive poses, limp, doll-like, sometimes acting like little girls”. Young women are often “subservient to men in ads, through both ads and position” (Kilbourne, p. 141). An ad for Think Skateboards blatantly did this when they showed a woman acting as a footrest for a man, leaning down on all fours wearing practically nothing. Many other ads show boys and men being active and strong, while girls and women are often posed in a passive, fragile way, or are covering their mouths in shame or embarrassment (Kilbourne, pp. 142-143). Ads also hypersexualize women and adds to the sexual pressure many teenagers are already dealing with. They see sexy portrayals of people in magazines, but without adequate sexual health education, they may not realize that engaging in certain behaviors can be risky and have long term health effects, including a sexually transmitted disease or unplanned pregnancy. There is also abundant sexual activity in music videos and song lyrics, TV and movies, and video games. Many of these forms of entertainment show sex as consequence-free and much of it exploits women’s bodies and glamorizes sexual violence (Kilbourne, p. 147).
Objectification of women in advertisements is more common than ever, and our bodies are often used to sell any product imaginable. Ads will chop women up and use parts of them when they think it will sell their product- whether its a pair of legs, a headless torso or a buttocks. Some ads even turn the women into the objects themselves. This can have lasting effects on women’s self-esteem and body image. Seeing these types of ads makes it difficult to see ourselves as whole beings. We look in the mirror and see blemishes on our skin, flabby stomachs, less than perfect hair and nails. Men are also taught to objectify women because these ads normalize it. Sexual images in advertising trivializes sex and is ridden with narcissism (Kilbourne, p. 260). We are getting so used to seeing sexual images that advertisers need to constantly push the envelope in order to keep our attention (Kilbourne, p. 269).
Objectification of women in advertisements is more common than ever, and our bodies are often used to sell any product imaginable. Ads will chop women up and use parts of them when they think it will sell their product- whether its a pair of legs, a headless torso or a buttocks. Some ads even turn the women into the objects themselves. This can have lasting effects on women’s self-esteem and body image. Seeing these types of ads makes it difficult to see ourselves as whole beings. We look in the mirror and see blemishes on our skin, flabby stomachs, less than perfect hair and nails. Men are also taught to objectify women because these ads normalize it. Sexual images in advertising trivializes sex and is ridden with narcissism (Kilbourne, p. 260). We are getting so used to seeing sexual images that advertisers need to constantly push the envelope in order to keep our attention (Kilbourne, p. 269).
Here are some examples of how advertisers will only show certain parts of women's bodies, or turn the women into objects themselves; this separating them from their whole beings is very objectifying and damaging