Evolution of Women's Portrayal in Media

As time evolves, media has become more prevalent. It has been designed to shape and influence the perceptions of the viewers. Women’s participation in media began much later than men, who initially played the primary character. Even so, women’s roles have greatly been domesticated by popular culture, especially in advertisements. They have varied from cooks, maids, and as of the late 60’s, women have been exploited in the marketing world as sexual objects to sell products, which raised a cause for concern of the portrayal of women in media (Shrikhande, 1). However, even since the 60’s until now, the objectification of women in media has not simmered down, but gradually increased. A good example of this is the Carl’s Jr’s advertisement for Super

Bowl, which aired in 2015. The advertisement, which is meant to promote the sales of their first ever “all natural” burger, materializes women through the use of commodification and objectification.

Commodification can be defined as the process of turning people into things, or commodities, for sale, i.e. the commodification of women’s bodies through advertising and media representations (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey, G-2). Where as, objectification is the attitudes and behaviors by which people are treated as if they were “things” (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey, G-4). These two key terms play an important role in the method of advertisement used by Carl’s Jr. In the beginning of the advertisement, Charlotte McKinney, a well-known model, who appears to be naked, is stared at by men in a sexual manner, which can ideally be called the ‘male gaze’. Male gaze was a concept coined by feminist film critic Laura Mulvey in 1976. It describes the

tendency in visual culture to depict the world and women from a masculine point of view and in terms of men's attitudes (Wikipedia). While the model struts herself through a vegetable market enjoying the glares of the men surrounding her, she uses a seductive tone and quotes, “I love going all natural.” From this, it can be depicted that being naked means “natural,” justifying Carl’s Jr.’s use of a nearly nude model for the advertisement of their new beef burger. When the model has her back turned towards the camera, two tomatoes cover her behind, where a man squeezes the tomatoes as she teasingly reacts with acceptance. Similarly, two cantaloupes cover her breasts. In this manner, the female body parts are dismembered to give focus to specific body parts – the breasts and the behind. While this objectifies the nude model to sell products, it has become a common trend in today’s media to follow such advertising methods to attract the male species.
Kirk and Okazawa-Rey discuss the use of women in advertising. They said that the “dominant U.S. culture often reduces women to bodies, valuing us only as sex objects or bearers of children.” Carl’s Jr. is well known for their controversial commercials because of the sexual objectification of female models as a method to draw attention to their fast food chain. Not only do they gain more views on YouTube and other forms of social media, but also successfully increase awareness by manipulating men to buy their products through their racy commercials, thereby increasing sales, calling it a “win-win” situation (Linsey Davis, abc). In previous commercials, Carl’s Jr. has used models such as Paris Hilton and Kate Upton in a racy manner, which has sparked critics to create the hashtag #WomenAreMoreThanMeat (Davis, abc). This is important for women all over the world, because commercials as such degrade the value of women. According to Kirk and Okazawa-Rey, “the objectification and commodification of women in advertising pave the way for women’s dismemberment (literal and figurative) in pornography. This demonstrates that the sexually objectified models used in commercials are dehumanized and seen as less competent by both men and women (Caroline Heldman).
In Caroline Heldman’s article Sexual Objectification, Part 1: What Is It?, for Ms.

magazine, sexual objectification is described as the process of representing or treating a person like a sex object, one that serves another’s sexual pleasure (Heldman). She also devised a Sex Object Test (SOT) to measure the presence of sexual objectification in images in the form of seven questions. Two questions that can be applied to this advertisement, “Does the image present a sexualized person as a stand-in for an object?” and “Does the image show a sexualized person as a commodity that can be bought and sold?” (Heldman) for which both answers will be yes. The model is used as stand-in for the burger that is only introduced at the end of the commercial. Although the advertisement makes it seem as though the model is the subject, she is merely degraded as a sexualized object to present the final commodity, which is the beef

burger.
It is very evident that the main focus of this commercial has been deterred from the introduction of the all-natural burger to the sexual objectification and commodification of the woman in the advertisement. But an aspect that cannot be ignored is that objectification and commodification does not apply only to women in media. Today, men are objectified more than women. However, the negative effects of objectification are higher on women than men. When women are objectified, “you perpetuate the idea that her worth lies exclusively in her appearance. This leads to excessive victim-blaming, unwelcome catcalling, mortifyingly high rates of sexual assault and rape (Alaxia LaFata, Elite Daily).” But for men, it is not the same. A comment on their appearance does not carry a heavier weight than it actually is, compared to women. This is where society is to blame because we live in a world, which a comment on appearance systematically engineers the attitudes of society towards people.
Carl’s Jr. has always been producing commercial that upraise the levels of commodification and objectification of women with a goal to increase the sales of their fast food products.