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The era of mass media is flooded with all kinds of advertisements, and this ubiquitous industry(beauty advertisements especially) has gained higher public awareness these days, since it has been accused of creating unreal ideals of beauty which pose pressure on females to become slimmer and more facially attractive, forcing them to damage their health at the expense. However, criticisms against advertisements are basically focused on the negative effect on women’s health, behind which there is in fact something we ignore. In brief, what should be noticed is that on acceptance of the reasonability of beauty advertisements, women are by osmosis admitting the inferiority of their social status compared with men. In the ancient times, women were controlloed both physically and mentally by stale social moralities and traditions, whereas in this nowadays society which seemingly emphasizes freedom, advertisements may be a new form a restriction to females. This rest of essay is going to argue that advertisements and media affect women’s social status in a negative way.
The social role of women is subtly defined as “affiliated to men” in advertisements and other media. The tricky thing is that beauty ideals in Ad video clips imperceptibly convey the message that the roles of women are related to sex and submissiveness (Kilbourne, 2007) (this can be corroborated from the various ads), which are properties regarded as attractive to men. According to the Mere Exposure Effect, people tend to prefer things that are familiar to them. Thus with bunches of advertisement displays perceived by people every day, they not only consider the effectiveness or reliability of the products, but at the same time, they form stereotypes. So this may probab...
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...192, 243-244. doi: 10.1192/bjp.bp.107.044164 (Treasure, Wack, & Roberts, 2008)
2. Zuckerman, D. (2005). Teenagers and cosmetic surgery. Virtual Mentor, 7(3).
Retrieved from http://virtualmentor.ama-assn.org/2005/03/oped1-0503.html. (Zuckerman, 2005)
3. Frith, K., Shaw, P., Cheng, H. (2005). The Construction of Beauty: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Women’s Magazine Advertising. The Journal of Communication, 55(1), 56-70. doi: 10.1111/j.14602466.2005.tb02658 (Frith, Shaw, & Cheng, 2005)
4. Kilbourne, Jean. “Beauty…and the Beast of Advertising.” Center for Media Literacy. 17 Feb. 2007
5. Bissonnette, Z. (2010, JAN 25). Male models earn less than female models: where's the outrage? Retrieved from http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/01/25/male-models-earn-less-than-female-models-wheres-the-outrage/ (Bissonnette, 2010)
It’s clear that those advertisements try to make an impact on our buying decisions. We can even say they manipulate viewers by targeting specific group of people or categorizing them so they could have a feeling this product is intended for them or what he or she represents. For instance, they use gender stereotypes. Advertises make use of men and woman appearance or behavior for the sake of making the message memorable. Therefore, most effective and common method is to represent a woman as a sexual object. They are linked with home environment where being a housewife or a mother is a perfect job for the. In other hand men are used more as work done representations. They are associated with power, leadership and efficiency. Those stereotypes make the consumer categorize themselves and reveals the mainstream idea of social status each gender needs to be to fit in and what products they are necessary to have to be part of that
First, Kilbourne’s research should be praised tremendously for bringing to light the unhealthy impression of true beauty in today’s culture. Kilbourne challenges the audience to reconsider their viewpoints on advertising that is sublime with sexual language. The evolution of advertising and product placement has drastically changed the real meaning of being a woman. According to the movie, every American is exposed to hundreds and thousands of advertisements each day. Furthermore, the picture of an “ideal women” in magazines, commercials, and billboards are a product of numerous computer retouching and cosmetics. Media creates a false and unrealistic sense of how women should be viewing themselves. Instead of being praised for their femininity and prowess, women are turned into objects. This can be detrimental to a society filled with girls that are brainwashed to strive to achieve this unrealistic look of beauty.
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...
Dominant and submissive stereotypes in advertising aren't only harmful to women, but men as well, as Sam Femiano and Mark Nickerson (Physiotherapists from the Centre for Media Literacy) explain “They are damaging because they narrow our notions of what men can be and do. They affect women's expectations of men in relationships and men's expectations of other men in work settings or in friendships. Media stereotypes have extra impact because they create images based on these assumptions, helping to shape men's own views about how they should act and how successful they are as men.” (CML, 2012)
In this age, media is more pervasive than ever, with people constantly processing some form of entertainment, advertisement or information. In each of these outlets there exists an idealized standard of beauty, statistically shown to effect the consumer’s reflection of themselves. The common portrayal of women’s bodies in the media has shown to have a negative impact on women and girls. As the audience sees these images, an expectation is made of what is normal. This norm does not correspond to the realistic average of the audience. Failing to achieve this isolates the individual, and is particularly psychologically harmful to women. Though men are also shown to also be effected negatively by low self-esteem from the media, there remains a gap as the value of appearance is seen of greater significance to women, with a booming cosmetic industry, majority of the fashion world, and the marketing of diet products and programs specifically targeting women.
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.
Within the beauty industry there are numerous examples of media propaganda that can be investigated, but the television and magazine industry privdes a very specific representation of what women experience daily through the media. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the ...
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
Beauty stereotypes having perfect physical specimens are presented in the ads. The women are young, sleek having zero size figure, yet well busted. Repeated representation of Beauty stereotypes creates a standard of beauty and fitness. The female viewers are persuaded to attain the unattainable ideal beauty. “For women, beauty has been institutionalized to the point where an entire industry devoted to beauty has been created. Beauty is tied not only to appearance but also to mental health and physical well being (Brand, 1999). This beauty ideal is an overall “look” that incorporates one’s physical features as well as a variety of products or services as clothing and cosmetics (Englis et al., 1994). Striving to meet the cultural ideal is a key selling message used by many types of advertisers involved in selling beauty – oriented products (Jacobson & Mazur, 1995).” (Gender and Advertising). Hence, the advertisers easily lure the female viewers to their products and engage them to the process of trying to attain ideal beauty. In India, the most popular product that sells this message is the fairness creams that claim to lighten the skin tone.
For a particular advertising to be effective there is needed to consider the possible attributes of the mass media to the origins and maintenance of gender roles. All these times, most of the language content used in advertising for men is solely based on the masculine attribute with the adjective words used to describe it such as strong, powerful, dashing and etc. While advertising for women are solely based on the feminine attribute with the adjective words used to describe it such as soft, tender, mild and etc. Specifically, it has been found that in a society where feminine values have a dominant influence on a culture, there tends to be less difference between women and men in the type of roles portrayed in advertising, whereas in a society where masculine values are dominant, there tends to be a large difference in societal roles attached to women and men in advertising (Wileset al. 1995; Miler and Collins
Even though the gap between genders began to diminish, gender stereotypes is still seen in ads (Wolska, 2011). Women are usually portrayed as perfect housewives and their main task is to raise children and do the housework (Wolska, 2011). They are mainly seen advertising for cleaning products (Shrikhande, 1998). This supports the fact that women's role in advertisements are limited inside the house. Men, on the other hand, are seen to be on top of their professional career, superior and independent (Wolska, 2011). In addition, women are seen as "decorative items" and "submissive" (shrikhande) they are represented in a lustful, seductive ways and are viewed as sex objects.
In “Beauty… and the Beast of Advertising” Jean Kilbourne argues that advertisements sell a lot more than just their products: “They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth, love and sexuality, popularity and normalcy” (1). Kilbourne states that in advertising there are two types of women, “Housewives” and “Sex objects”. Kilbourne calls the sexually objectified women “a mannequin, a shell” because their beauty is flawless, they lacks all of the imperfections that make people appear human (2). Kilbourne also states that these women are all skinny, often tall and “long-legged”, and youthful (2). She claims that all “beautiful” women in ads obey this “norm” (Kilbourne 2). Kilbourne strongly states that advertisements lack the sense
Beauty is commonly defined as ‘a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses.’ However, this definition or idea is altered because of society and the media. Media is a fast moving negative influence on people in the United States. The use of advertisement helps the media get their next ‘must have’ object or image of an impossibly perfect model out into the world in seconds. Advertisement is everywhere we look. They are seen on buses, televisions, magazines, and stores. These images of advertisement pressures people everywhere to feel the need to get the new must have item or to beautify themselves in order to live up to society’s standards. Women are affected by media more harshly than men. They are constantly looking for a way to ‘beautify’ themselves. This is because the media relates the images
I am a mixed race-- African American and White -- woman from a middle-class household who is obtaining a college degree. As a woman, I am interested in exploring society’s standards which police women’s bodies. As noted in Buzzfeed’s video Women's Ideal Body Types Throughout History, this beauty standard constantly changes through generations. Whereas “curvy” (broader hips and waist) was seen as an attractive body in the Renaissance era, the standard now is more focused on a slim waist, narrow thighs, and a large bust. Although beauty standards naturally fluctuate from era to era, I find that as a mixed race individual these standards change quickly for me depending on the people I surround myself with.
There are over seven billion people on earth and every single one looks different. No matter how much people say that being different is unique, they are wrong. Society has set a beauty standard, with the help of the media and celebrities, that makes people question their looks. This standard is just a definition of what society considers being “beautiful.” This idea is one that mostly everyone knows about and can relate to. No one on this planet is exactly the same, but people still feel the need to meet this standard. Everyone has two sides to them; there is the one that says “you are perfect just the way you are”, while the other side puts you down and you tell yourself “I have to change, I have to fit in.” There is always going to be that side that cares and the one that doesn’t.