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Recommended: Impact of culture on society
December 17th 2007
Kate White,
Cosmopolitan
New York, Houston Street
P.O. Box 9321
Dear Mrs. White,
The society and I know that Cosmopolitan is a magazine that is aimed at women and has been a women’s magazine since the 1960’s. My main message, as me being a constant reader of the Cosmopolitan magazine, that I am trying to get across to you is the certain advertisements Cosmopolitan decides to include in their issues every year. These advertisements create a controversy within the media and I am inspired to make a change to this. I am not only speaking from one woman’s point of view but in fact several of my friends, who are also readers of the magazine, have mentioned similar things to me and the negativity they are concerned it may create towards the women
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We don’t realize how much of an issue it really is until someone informs us. These sorts of advertisements may have no impact on people whereas towards some people it may have a huge impact on their everyday choices. By portraying women as sex objects, gives a very negative impression towards the Women’s society as it lowers their self esteem or even starts to make them feel scared as if they are not allowed to do certain things just because the men tell them not too. To prevent such degrading and portrayal of women as sex objects in the world, Cosmopolitan may have to change or reconsider the sort of advertisements they are putting on their magazines as they should be aware of the types of readers they have. We need to further prevent this from happening in other brands by displaying women in such a manner. This may cause dividing between the men and the women, as the men will otherwise slowly think its okay for them to be in control of the actions of women. We need to show the both genders that there is and will be
Advertising is form of communicating and using methods into getting the buyers to purchase a product. Cosmopolitan has done a good job in determining what readers and listeners want and need. Cosmopolitan is a magazine directed toward young people who have low self- confidence and low self-esteem and also who care about health and appearance. As Fowles said, “By giving form to people’s deep-lying desires and picturing states of being that individuals privately yearn for.” (Fowles, 137). All advertisers know who and what readers wish or long for.
In the documentary film, Page One: Inside The New York Times, the inner world of journalism is revealed through journalists David Carr and Brian Stelter as the newspaper company The New York Times, struggles to keep alive within a new wave of news journalism. The film is dedicated to reveal the true inner mechanics of what modern day new journalists face on a daily basis and leaves the audience almost in a state of shock. It broadcasts news journalism as yes, an old school method of news generation, but it also highlights an important component that reveals the importance behind this “old school” methodology. We often think that progression always correlates with positive products, but the documentary insists that within the case of modern journalism, the new wave method is actually a detriment that can reap negative consequences.
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...
Cosmopolitan is an international magazine for women, and is the best-selling women’s magazine for decades. The notoriously risqué magazine says it is “by women for women.” Also referred as Cosmo, the magazine was published in 1886 in the United States as a family magazine, and eventually became what we know of as a women’s magazine during the late 1960’s. This magazine is published by a for-profit organization called Hearst Magazine and has 64 international editions. It is currently being printed in 35 languages and is being distributed in more than 100 countries. Its boasts more than 3 million in paid circulation each and every month, and 115,000 paid subscribers.
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.
Women have been an integral part of society and culture throughout the world for the entirety of its history. This being said, women have not always been held in the brightest and most enabling of lights. With the advent of advertising, women have been portrayed in a variety of degrading tropes that repressed the freedom that many women began to publicly cry out for. The print advertisements of the 1950s have been portrayed as the worst of the offenders in objectifying women as unintelligent beings. Although I do support the thought that the advertisements of the 1950s were bad for putting forward the idea of women’s liberation, the ads of this time also helped to prepare for the second wave of feminism and the sexual revolution. It also promoted a positive look on being a woman, in addition to the negative, that promoted the gathering sense of identification throughout society in being a woman. Thus I am putting forward the additional idea that though the advertisements during this time were not all healthy views on womanhood, there were a great many that helped move women into the next 50 years, and that we could not be where we are today if we had not had the mass exposure of these ads in culture in the 1950s.
Open up any magazine and you will see the objectification of women. The female body is exploited by advertising, to make money for companies that sell not just a product, but a lifestyle to consumers. Advertisements with scantily clothed women, in sexualized positions, all objectify women in a sexual manner. Headless women, for example, make it easy to see them as only a body by erasing the individuality communicated through faces, eyes, and eye contact. Interchangeability is an advertising theme that reinforces the idea that women, like objects, are replaceable.
When I asked people around me how they felt about these commercials, I was very surprised by the answers I received. The most popular answer for why this was an acceptable form of promoting anything was “Well that 's just how they do it.” or “Sex sells.”, but I still could not fathom what the media was making women out to be. I seemed to be the only one who found these ads to be abnormal, and that was just it. Everyone I had asked about these ads had never questioned why they might be wrong, and looked at them positively because they fit the demographic that these ads are made for: the average, straight, cisgendered, male. And this is exactly the problem. As soon as men accept the objectification of women as their reality, it becomes completely normal. Overtime this furthers the regression of women 's rights, and promotes rape culture. Because of the fact that these ads show women as merely objects of desire made for men 's pleasure, this highlights the second idea in rape culture, that says women are treated as objects of masculinity among other
To sum up, it is often said that advertising is shaping women gender identity, and some have been argued that the statement is true, because of the higher amount of sexual references of women that advertisement show and the damages that occur on women’s personality and the public negative opinions of those women. As well, the negative effects that those kinds of advertisements cause to young generations and make them feel like they should simulate such things and are proud of what they are doing because famous actors are posting their pictures that way. Others deem this case as a personal freedom and absolutely unrelated to shaping women gender identity. On the contrast, they believe that, those sorts of advertisements are seriously teaching women how to stay healthy and be attractive, so they might have self-satisfaction after all.
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 sexual object? The Tiger Beer advertisement shown in the appendix is a clear example of the objectification of women in advertising. The Tiger Beer advert was made to appeal to men from the age of 20 to 60.
Advertising in American culture has taken on the very interesting character of representing our culture as a whole. Take this Calvin Klein ad for example. It shows the sexualization of not only the Calvin Klein clothing, but the female gender overall. It displays the socially constructed body, or the ideal body for women and girls in America. Using celebrities in the upper class to sell clothing, this advertisement makes owning a product an indication of your class in the American class system. In addition to this, feminism, and how that impacts potential consumer’s perception of the product, is also implicated. Advertisements are powerful things that can convey specific messages without using words or printed text, and can be conveyed in the split-second that it takes to see the image. In this way, the public underestimates how much they are influenced by what they see on television, in magazines, or online.
The portrayals of men in advertising began shifting towards a focus on sexual appeal in the 1980s, which is around the same that women in advertising were making this shift as well. According to Amy-Chinn, advertisements from 1985 conveyed the message that “men no longer just looked, they were also to be looked at” as seen in advertisements with men who were stripped down to their briefs (2). Additionally, advertisements like these were influencing society to view the male body “as an objectified commodity” (Mager and Helgeson 240). This shows how advertisements made an impact on societal views towards gender roles by portraying men as sex objects, similarly to women. By showcasing men and women in little clothing and provocative poses, advertisements influenced society to perceive men and women with more sexual
Maclean’s is a Canadian news magazine established in 1905 by John Bayne Maclean. Distributed weekly, it is Canada’s only national current affairs magazine; it covers such matters as politics, international affairs, social issues, business and culture. On average, the magazine circulates 366,394 issues per week and has a readership of 2,753,000. 51% of readers are men and 49% are women, with an average age of 45 years old.
With the growth of magazine popularity, both online and in print, youth around the world are exposed to the ideas of gender expression, identities, and roles. However, with society’s influence, the spread of heteronormative, cisgender, and white ideals have been placed as top priority. After examining men’s fashion magazine, Gentlemen Quarterly, I discovered that much of their magazine revolved around the typical wealthy, white, straight, and able-bodied male. Despite their attempts to branch out to other minority groups, they are unsuccessful in breaking out of their classic audience. GQ’s website is built to automatically draw their viewers into articles, flashing large pictures and headlines immediately into their audience’s face. Most photos
An article by Christina N Baker, Images of Women’s Sexuality in Advertisements: A content Analysis of Black And White Oriented Women’s and Men’s Magazine emphasizes on how women’s are portrayed in media such as advertisements and Magazine. The author analyzes how media has a huge impact in our society today; as a result, it has an influence on race and gender role between men and women.