When beginning my search for TV advertisements that feature women, I had little to no trouble finding commercials that displayed female-empowering messages. It’s evident today that there are numerous companies and brands jumping on board to using feminism in order to help sell products and gain attraction towards their products. We can see throughout the years of advertising and television commercials that feminism has grown increasingly popular to use as a means of activism. Although companies don’t have to do this, it’s clear that they want to. But the question is, are these companies genuinely interested in feminism or are they just doing it for the profit? The article “Faux Activism in Recent Female-Empowering Advertising” by Alyssa Baxter …show more content…
As the article states, an empowerment undertone is typically seen when women are portrayed in a position of power, breaking traditional gender norms or highlighting women’s natural beauty. When analyzing each advertisement, I compare similarities on how the study in the article analyzed their commercials such as stating how each commercial displayed one or more elements of the empowering undertone. After analyzing each commercial, I’ll then talk about similarities and differences with the information provided in the article as related to these female-empowering advertisements. Afterwards, I’ll proceed with the same process but for the submissive undertone advertisements instead.
With CoverGirl’s “#GirlsCan” advertisement, it depicts well-known women such as Ellen DeGeneres and Queen Latifah encouraging women to go after their dreams, even when others try to hold them back. This commercial ultimately sends a message to get rid of what girls can’t do and replace it with what girls can do, overall empowering women to strive for what they want to do in life and challenging individuals who don’t believe in them. This ad helps to disregard society’s perception of what girls can’t do and helps to strengthen women’s capability of attaining their
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Yet, what about the other companies or brands? This article states “ad-her-tising may be nothing more than a trend that gets individuals to buy products” (Baxter, 2015). The word ‘may’ is powerful enough to note that some companies might actually want to change the world and use feminism in their advertisements in order to do so. For example, Ellen DeGeneres, who is featured in the CoverGirl female-empowerment commercial, is well-known for her talk show where she inspires women today as well as inspiring the LGBT community to be confident in themselves and to not be afraid to speak out. So that brings me to reiterate the question, what about the companies that weren’t analyzed in this study? Are they sincere in their campaigns? Or are they like the brands studied in the article, where they use feminism strictly as a means to profit
This is another commercial where we can directly see how the advertisers are overlooking gender stereotypes, by it being ranked number one it proves that when gender stereotypes and gender bias are not incorporated the advertisement becomes effective and
Friday night, as I watched television I evaluated commercial content in relation to the target of women and what message advertisements send to women of all ages. In one hour I saw twenty-four commercials, eleven were targeted at women and every single one had something to do with either the appearance or beauty of women or a domestic focus. These commercials touted products to enhance beauty or lose weight with the underlying message of "improved self-esteem". I have always blamed the media, or more broadly, cultural attitudes for the problems young girls and women face with low self-image and often find myself citing Barbie dolls and the overwhelmingly pink aisles at the toys-r-us as a root cause of the marginalization of women's roles. Peggy Orenstein refers to this as the "politics of the external", a term which, at first, I had a difficult time accepting. Is this not a major implication when discussing a society that promotes female self-censorship and devalued intellectual potential? After reading "Schoolgirls" I came to understand exactly what Orenstein meant and she convinced me that "the internal need not, and indeed should not, be ignored". Although it may not be well documented it is indeed established that although "women's lib" has come a very long way since we received the right to vote there are still social implications that can only confuse women's' identity and self-image. Peggy Orenstein's book has indeed caused me to look deeper into the internal issues affecting self-esteem that women face beginning with adolescence.
Advertising, whether criticized or celebrated, is undeniably a strong force in American society. Portrayals and Images of women have long been used to sell in published advertisements. However, how they have been used has changed enormously throughout the decades. Women have fought to find a lasting and prominent position in their society. Only in the span of twenty years, between 1900’s and 1920’s, the roles of women changed dramatically here in United States.
Our world has progressed an enormous amount in the past few centuries. And even today, in our modern era, we are bigger and smarter, but our thinking has not changed. Women have been restricted from many opportunitIes in the past. We as women are still being criticised and objectified, which is disgraceful and sickening because we are constantly told “close your legs when you sit” or “don’t do that it’s not lady-like”. This is portrayed in advertising that basically makes a mockery of our freedom. And we ask ourselves, where did the idea of sexism and gender inequality emerge from? Religion. It is the root of sexism and gender inequality which has been practiced for over two thousand years. It is presented through the use of advertising,
The documentary Killing Us Softly 4 discusses and examines the role of women in advertisements and the effects of the ads throughout history. The film begins by inspecting a variety of old ads. The speaker, Jean Kilbourne, then discusses and dissects each ad describing the messages of the advertisements and the subliminal meanings they evoke. The commercials from the past and now differ in some respects but they still suggest the same messages. These messages include but are not limited to the following: women are sexual objects, physical appearance is everything, and women are naturally inferior then men. Kilbourne discusses that because individuals are surrounded by media and advertisements everywhere they go, that these messages become real attitudes and mindsets in men and women. Women believe they must achieve a level of beauty similar to models they see in magazines and television commercials. On the other hand, men expect real women to have the same characteristics and look as beautiful as the women pictured in ads. However, even though women may diet and exercise, the reality...
Common sense seems to dictate that commercials just advertise products. But in reality, advertising is a multi-headed beast that targets specific genders, races, ages, etc. In “Men’s Men & Women’s Women”, author Steve Craig focuses on one head of the beast: gender. Craig suggests that, “Advertisers . . . portray different images to men and women in order to exploit the different deep seated motivations and anxieties connected to gender identity.” In other words, advertisers manipulate consumers’ fantasies to sell their product. In this essay, I will be analyzing four different commercials that focuses on appealing to specific genders.
We focused our research on the gender of the individuals in the commercials, the wording used to sell the products being marketed, the colors shown in the commercials, how each gender was depicted in the commercials, and what their roles
I have examined and analyzed the COVERGIRL™ NatureLuxe advertisement that uses common feminine stereotypes. In this advertisement, COVERGIRL™, which runs in Seventeen magazines, targets women through their choices of colors, fonts, and images used. Certain stereotypes are used; such as, those who are more feminine tend to prefer lighter, happier colors, such as pink. Also, the use of a celebrity, who many young women look to as an icon, assists in the advertisement of the COVERGIRL™ product. COVERGIRL™, more than likely, is able to successfully market their lip-gloss product in the United States by using common gender stereotypes to show femininity and how those, mainly women, should be presented in today’s society.
These days it seems as though advertisements aimed towards men purposely exploit women. The more male oriented the product, the more skin the woman advertising it must show. The advertisement industry has one motto in mind when advertising products and that is to bring in revenue by any means necessary. There must be a woman involved and she has to keep her clothes to a minimal. In today’s society the imagery of an advertisement speaks louder than the words or products being displayed. Especially when the advertisements are targeting men and women, it’s almost impossible to tell if a product is being sold or if sex is being sold. Tom Ford advertisement toward men will often have a half-dressed woman endorsing the product and an advertisement toward a woman will be more on the tasteful high-fashion side.
Advertising surrounds the world every second of the day. This form of influence has had the power to influence how society views gender roles ever since men and women began to appear in advertisements. Through the exposure to many different gender portrayals in advertising, gender roles become developed by society. This stems from how men and women are depicted, which forms stereotypes regarding the individual roles of men and women. People often shift their definition of an ideal image towards what they see in advertisements. From this, they tend to make comparisons between themselves and the advertisement models. Advertisements tend to be brief, but impactful. The different portrayals of men and women in advertising show that advertisements
The objectification of women is a huge issue in society and is often led by advertising. However many men still believe that the adverts depicting women in a sexual and often passive posture are not very offensive but rather very funny or sexy. However how would they feel if it were their daughter or sister being advertised throughout the world as a sex object?
Women – beautiful, strong matriarchal forces that drive and define a portion of the society in which we live – are poised and confident individuals who embody the essence of determination, ambition, beauty, and character. Incomprehensible and extraordinary, women are persons who possess an immense amount of depth, culture, and sophistication. Society’s incapability of understanding the frame of mind and diversity that exists within the female population has created a need to condemn the method in which women think and feel, therefore causing the rise of “male-over-female” domination – sexism. Sexism is society’s most common form of discrimination; the need to have gender based separation reveals our culture’s reluctance to embrace new ideas, people, and concepts. This is common in various aspects of human life – jobs, households, sports, and the most widespread – the media. In the media, sexism is revealed through the various submissive, sometimes foolish, and powerless roles played by female models; because of these roles women have become overlooked, ignored, disregarded – easy to look at, but so hard to see.
In order to successfully grasp women’s attention, they shifted their branding and narrative process to targeting “feminine sensitivity” in order to gain a better appeal to women. In 1990, Nike executives created a team of employees together with Wieden and Kennedy, Nike’s advertising agency and revolutionised its strategy by focusing on the issues that “really matter to women”. What they did was shifting the way they appeal to women’s bodily consciousness through guilt to presenting the products not as commodity, but as concepts; the brand as experience and lifestyle. In the case of Nike’s advertisement, it referred to the “empathy/dialogue” campaign. By doing this, Nike “addressed athletics as a personal experience of growth rather than a path to glory and physical power” (Lucas 152) and eventually managed to corner the women’s market. Later in the late 1990s which is the rise of second-wave feminism, the movement sought to liberate women from constraining gender roles and gender discrimination of the patriarchal culture in which they lived and also railed for images, especially in advertising, that portrayed women as more than housewives and positioned them as equals to men. This is because “feminists had identified advertising as one of the key sites for the production of sexist imagery. Throughout the subsequent decades women voiced their anger about being treated like objects to be visually consumed.” (Gill 83) Hence, marketers have acknowledged that simply empathise with women is not enough and as a result, according to Cole and Hribar, Nike had to transform its image to a “good public citizen” (347-369). Nike’s co-founder, Bill Knight, specifies that he wants Nike to be thought of as a company with a “soul that recognises the value in human beings” and this idea of kindness gave birth the ad campaign “If you let me play”. The ad campaign
The average American is exposed to hundreds of advertisements per day. Advertisements targeted toward females have an enormous effect on women's thoughts, attitudes, perceptions, and actions. Most of the time, women don't even realize these advertisements are formulating self-image issues. These ideals surround them daily and they become naturalized to the ads. Advertising creates an entire worldview persuading women to emulate the images they see all around them. In order to create a market for their products, companies constantly prey upon women's self esteem, to feel like they aren't good enough just the way they are. This makes women constantly feel stressed out about their appearance (Moore). Advertising has a negative effect on women's body image, health, and self-esteem.
Curry and Clarke’s article believe in a strategy called “visual literacy” which develops women and men’s roles in advertisements (1983: 365). Advertisements are considered a part of mass media and communications, which influence an audience and impact society as a whole. Audiences quickly begin to rely on messages sent through advertisements and can create ideologies of women and men. These messages not only are extremely persuasive, but they additionally are effective in product consumption in the media (Curry and Clarke 1983: