Blog 3 - Dangerous Images in Advertising

It’s well known to most people that there is, and always has been, an incredible amount of exploitation in advertising. More recently, over the past several decades, there has been an increase in sexual exploitation of women and girls, to the point where it’s become practically pornographic. These unabashedly hyper-sexualized images of women are used to sell anything from fast-food to office supplies. Even PETA has released absurdly sexualized ads; this one promotes veganism.

There are several colossal problems here, so let’s examine them. In mass media, not just advertising, women are portrayed as two-dimensional caricatures of themselves, stripped down (pardon the pun) to the bare essentials of what media executives and advertisers consider necessary to sell products and, more importantly, a beauty ideology, to the general public. Women’s bodies are objectified - put on display - to promote products because, as the age old adage tells us, “sex sells”. Their bodies are even sometimes dismembered with images of only the sexualized parts – breasts, thighs, butt, hips – to reinforce the concept that women are merely the sum of their body parts. Jean Kilborne, in her book Deadly Persuasion discusses an important difference between men and women in ads: “even very young men are generally portrayed as secure, powerful, and serious. People in control of their lives stand upright, alert, and ready to meet the world. In contrast, females often appear off-balance, insecure, and weak. Often our body parts are bent, conveying unpreparedness, submissiveness and appeasement” (Kilbourne, 142).

Men are not subjected to the same objectification in mass media, in large part because men still occupy the majority of the high-level positions in this business. Most of these are white heterosexual men who are attracted to a certain female archetype, and this attraction is what they push onto the public to condition them into accepting these images as the ideal beauty standard. Here is where another problem becomes painfully apparent – there are people dictating to us what should be considered beautiful, but there is also an utter lack of diversity among the people telling us what is beautiful! Consumers are a diverse group of people, with different body types, skin colors, genders, sexual preferences, hairstyles, clothing styles, etc. Therefore, it stands to reason that these consumers would be attracted to a variety of different body types, skin colors, genders, sexual preferences, hairstyles, clothing styles... But what the media and advertisers define as beautiful is a very specific concept. In particular, the ideal woman should be young, thin, yet toned, and light-skinned with long, (preferably blond) straight hair. As Wykes and Gunther aptly point out in their conclusion to The Media and Body Image “women feature in culture more often than not because of how they look and the preferred look is young, slender, sexual and white” (Wykes & Gunther, 206).

It’s a common practice to Photoshop pictures of women in order to make them look “perfect” before these images are released with the advertisement. Models and actresses on magazine covers and billboards are frequently made to look younger and thinner than they really are, airbrushed to within an inch of their lives so as to mask any blemishes or cellulite that might make them look like a real person.

Women of colour are immensely underrepresented in mass media, and when they are, their natural skin color is usually lightened; a process coined “whitewashing”. The extent to which these images are altered is incredibly dangerous because of the effect that they can have on the consumer.

In her book The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf discusses the influence of women’s magazines, stating that:

Women’s magazines for over a century have been one of the most powerful agents for changing women’s roles, and throughout that time – today more than ever – they have consistently glamorized whatever the economy, their advertisers, and, during wartime, the government, needed at that moment from women. (Wolf, 64)

These magazines, and the images within, are used by advertisers to prey on women’s insecurities that they, the advertisers, created in the first place.

According to the marketing firm Yankelovich, in the 1970s Americans were exposed to about 500 ads per day. Now, those living in larger cities can be exposed to as many as 5,000 ads in a single day. This number is frightening when you begin to think about it – we are being bombarded by thousands of messages from advertisers every day, trying to sell us a product by telling us how imperfect, incomplete, unfulfilled and unattractive we are. As adults, most people learn to tune at least some of it out as white noise, understanding that advertisers are trying to make money and, in doing so, using unrealistic images in marketing campaigns. However, children have not developed that understanding yet and are therefore much more vulnerable to the effects of media and advertising. A study performed by the nonprofit company Common Sense Media (https://www.commonsensemedia.org) found that teenagers in the U.S. spend about nine hours a day using media, and children 8 to 12 spend about six hours a day consuming media. Children (and many adults) lack the defenses necessary to protect them from the adverse effects of advertising, and this leads to a negative body image developing at an early age, especially among girls.

As Jean Kilbourne appropriately said in a speech delivered at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania: “The image isn’t real, it’s artificial, it’s constructed, it’s impossible. But real women and girls measure ourselves against it every single day. Of course it affects female self-esteem, and it affects how men feel about the very real women in their lives.”

With images of impossibly thin, flawlessly fair-skinned women, how are young girls who don’t match this ridiculous “beauty standard” supposed to grow up with any semblance of self-confidence? Without diversity in mainstream media, how will these girls understand that beauty is everywhere, that every woman is beautiful no matter her shape, size or skin color? How will a young girl know that she is beautiful too? And that she is important because her opinion also has worth, not just her looks?

In order to halt, and potentially reverse, the negative effects created by advertising, I believe that one of the first steps we need to take is restricting advertising and marketing to children under the age of 12. The UK, Greece, Denmark and several other countries in the EU have already implemented this. In addition, I think that advertising food products should be limited, especially for fast food and other low-quality food items that have been proven to have no nutritional benefit and to cause health issues. For companies selling products (food or otherwise) that can be detrimental to our health, I would suggest a warning label be included in the advertising campaign and on the product itself. I would also consider putting a limit on the annual amount that a company can spend on advertising, and make it much less than is currently being spent by large corporations such as the Walt Disney Company and L’Oréal.

These are only some initial suggested preventable measures, and we haven’t even begun to address the other destructive images and racist and sexist stereotypes being perpetually propagated in mainstream media. But if we work together as a society to recognize how powerful the media are, and how damaging these images and messages can be, to everyone, we may be able to develop a solution.

Works Cited

Kilbourne, Jean. Deadly Persuasion: Why Women And Girls Must Fight The Addictive Power Of Advertising. 1999. Print

Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used against Women. 1991. Print.

Wykes, Maggie, and Barrie Gunter. The Media and Body Image: If Looks Could Kill. London: SAGE, 2005. Print.