Objectifying Women

In today’s society, as technology, food manipulation, politics and the status of women continue to advance how likely is for this society to alter past beliefs and norms and how will it take a toll on society? This drastic change, which is slowly in progress, is relative all throughout the world and thus become an important World Issue. Women are continuing to be seen as mere objects and their stand in the hierarchy will struggle to rise if this doesn’t change. Since women have always been less dominant in all situations, they don’t really make decisions, which allows men to be more dominant, as seen in advertisements. To further elaborate on how in the past the status of women was, women who lived in medieval Europe and Ancient Europe were neither given rights that women exercise today (ie; had no voting rights, subject to domestic abuse, etc.) They were also married off, in both societies, to secure political alliances. (.yahoo) In North America, the portrayal of women in advertising is due to the history and continuous low status of women. Women are used as objects in more advertisements, especially alcohol and beer campaigns because obviously it gets the attention the targeted audience. The evolution of women in advertising, has come a long way from the past where the traditional stereotype of women is exposed by the advertiser’s image of women in the 1950’s. That image of woman was as a "dedicated homemaker who sacrificed all personal aspirations to pamper her husband, chauffeur her children, scrub floors, and teach her daughters to do the same" (Silvulka, 254). Advertisers created these perfect family roles for all the people in the advertisements, which were unachievable and it left women with an identity that had been slap...

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...hering.’ These roles ‘matched’ the genders and they were carried throughout the next stages as well. Also, as time passed men were the ones who went off to war and women stayed at home and took care of the families but at this same time the norms changed. While men were off doing the masculine things, women started to take over jobs in society which allowed them to do more than just stay at home all the time, and this is where there was a bit of a change. Yet men were so accustomed to being seen as trying to live up to the masculine role that it’s been carried into the 21st as well and they feel a need to be the provider. Women are not seen as low within society anymore but when they turn to look at perfume or alcohol related advertisements, they status is drained from them. This view of women in advertisements will always continue to follow society through media.