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Does the sexualisation of women in advertising impact society
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Does the sexualisation of women in advertising impact society
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We live in a society full of commercialism. With marketing companies competing with one another to sell their products, they must produce the most appealing advertisements to attract the consumer. Adults and children are exposed to many advertisements on a daily basis, from television to magazines to billboards. These all use many rhetorical strategies and ideologies to gain the audience’s attention. In advertisements there are hidden tactics to promote their products and appeal to the consumer. One very popular technique used by these companies is sex. Sexual appeal is a huge marketing tactic in our society and many advertisements definitely promote “sex sells” in their advertisements. For instance, Carl’s Jr. commercials and advertisements …show more content…
targets the male audience with attractive models and celebrities in seductive and skimpy attire. Carl’s Jr. has continuously used this approach in order to interest male consumers with stereotypical things men are intrigued to such as seductive women and sex. Advertisements, billboards, and commercials have a great influence on women, specifically in body image, career and academic pursuits, and relationships in marriage and dating. The notorious Carl’s Jr. advertisements will always be popular in our society because our culture values sex appeal. Fast-food and sex are not two concepts that are associated, however joining the two produces a more successful advertisement. Kilbourne says, “Change needs to happen by striving for a new culture, where the public is educated and think of themselves as citizens, not consumers. What's at stake is an ability have an alternative -- freely chosen lives” (Killing Us Softly 4). Our society’s interpretations of men, women, and our bodies, are so extremely limiting and we need a more realistic representation of both men and women in our media. Our advertisements need a more encompassing, realistic, and sympathetic reimagining of masculinity, femininity, and human
This thought has been held on for far too long. In a consumer-driven society, advertisements invade the minds of every person who owns any piece of technology that can connect to the internet. Killbourne observes that “sex in advertising is pornographic because it dehumanizes and objectifies people, especially women,” (271). Advertising takes the societal ideology of women and stereotypes most kids grow up learning and play on the nerves of everyone trying to evoke a reaction out of potential customers, one that results in them buying products.
Advertisements are all over the place. Whether they are on TV, radio, or in a magazine, there is no way that you can escape them. They all have their target audience who they have specifically designed the ad for. And of course they are selling their product. This is a multi billion dollar industry and the advertiser’s study all the ways that they can attract the person’s attention. One way that is used the most and is in some ways very controversial is use of sex to sell products. For me to analyze this advertisement I used the rhetorical triangle, as well as ethos, pathos, and logos.
Carrie Packwood Freeman and Debra Merskin are the authors of “Having it his Way: The Construction of Masculinity in Fast-Food TV Advertising”. They describe how fast food restaurants across America use masculinity in their commercials to target the male population and get them to buy their food. Although I concede that fast food restaurants do use masculinity to target the male population, I also insist that they are also used to target the female population of America as well. The masculinity not only appeals to the male population, but the female population as well. In the article, Freeman and Merskin analyze commercials for six different fast food restaurants that use masculinity to sell the idea of their food being good and manly.
This is a compare and contrast rhetorical analysis paper focusing on a print billboard advertisement and television commercial. The billboard advertisement is centered on a smoking death count, sponsored by several heart research associations. In addition, the television Super Bowl commercial illustrates how irresistible Doritos are, set in an ultrasound room with a couple and their unborn child. The following paragraphs will go in depth to interpret the pathos, logos, and ethos of both the billboard and the television advertisements.
“Sex sells” has been used as an excuse to exploit and humiliate women through advertising for years. It is seen everywhere: television, movies, magazines, billboards, literally any place that can have an advertisement put in/on it. One company that specializes in advertisements composed of sexualizing women in order to sell their clothes is American Apparel. For years, they have created degrading ads that make the average believe they need to look like these images in order to feel good about themselves. Advertisements like these have a negative effect on society and especially women but American Apparel has taken things to a whole new level of exploitation.
Watching television growing up, half of the time spent watching was filled with advertisements. Most of the time, the ad would include a beautiful woman, barely dressed, doing something sexually suggestive. The whole advertisement would consist of this, while most people have no idea what the product being sold is. Then at the very end, they provide a brief description of the product. This is an example of using sex to sell products. It is no secret that advertisers have been using sex to sell their products for years. These tools are used in all types of advertisements. However, this is not just selling sex, it is selling elitism. It is selling the status of “hey, if you can get our product, you can get these types of girls”. Elitism is
Companies have rhetoric in their advertisements. The goal is to persuade a watcher or listener into believing that their brand of a certain product is the best. This in turn will make people want to buy the product. When it comes to advertising for a product, the majority of people see it as a concept that is both simple and harmless. As Chidester points out, through the eyes of popular culture as religion, the product associated with the advertisement is considered to be a fetishized object.
Sex is everywhere in our society. It is on TV, magazines, radio, billboards, and basically anywhere you look today. People cannot get away from sex in advertising because so many companies use it. Sex appeals are used in advertising all the time, and people love to look at it because 'Sometimes people listen better with their eyes' (Steel 137). Sex in advertising is an effective technique that is used today. It helps companies successfully sell their product in our market. Of course it has to be directed at the right audience, and sold at the right places in order for it to work.
In prevalent culture, the term “sex sells” acts as a beacon in the minds of many young girls: What used to be just a simple terminological play on words to express the sexually explicit culture of magazines and the sale of fad products, is now being used in a literal sense. Teen girls have grown to believe that selling or “giving away” their sex has become the norm and saying no is now the equivalent of writer Sylvia Plath sticking her head in a stove, or in other words, committing social suicide. Many of these girls do not know that they are being sexually exploited because of this. They believe in their heads that they have no choice when it comes to performing these sexual acts and fail to realize they are being exploited by men (or women), which more often than not ultimately results in dire situations in the end.
You’re sitting down on your coach and you see an attractive girl winking at you, men are aroused, woman want to be her, and it is followed by a famous phrase, “got milk”, now you suddenly want milk! This is just one technique that advertisers use to manipulate customers into purchasing their product. Charles A. O’Neil wrote an essay that discusses advertisement and its ability to persuade a targeted audience. Frank Luntz also evaluates advertisers and their methods of persuasion. O’Neil however captures readers with his effective way of applying pathos, while Luntz gives readers credibility and applies logos.
Often times, companies use a social group in society and turn them into objects to enhance the impact of their advertisement. A social group that is commonly targeted is women, as they are used to attract both men and their own gender to different products. In Burger King’s ‘Seven Incher’ burger advertisement, American woman are objectified. Burger King is attempting to reel in customers through standard appeals, diction, and images, but in turn is blatantly marginalizing women.
In one picture at the top is the word “Chaos.” In the background under the word chaos there are blurred out buildings that are stories high. We see the traffic lights are red and the street is full of cars. We can imagine the noise and feel the stress from this place. In the foreground we see a hand and down to the forearm. On each finger there is a different phone number and a name to go with each one. On the palm there is a to do list with one task saying to, “Break up with GF.” At the start of the wrist there is a grocery list that continues down the forearm with the last item being “BUY PALM!” with an arrow pointing to the to-do list. In the other picture at the top is the word “Order.” The background is plain white. It is quiet. The foreground has the new Centro Two Palm. At the very bottom of the ad it is introducing the all-new Centro Two and the other colors it comes in, red, pink, yellow and blue. Then it has its slogan which says, “Organize your life with Palm.”
Fast food advertising is a billion dollar industry. Advertisers use such gimmicks as celebrities, and cartoon characters. Many fast food chains have their own cute character to represent them. These characters draw the attention of the young preschoolers, tweens and teens. The celebrity athlete or current pop musicians are used to advertise fast food and again draws in the tweens, teens and 20 something adults. There are the ads that say to you, “Mom needs a break tonight”, “tell her you want (any fast food restaurant name) for dinner tonight.” There are the ads that show beautiful, thin women eating fast food usually with the look of satisfaction on their faces. Lastly let’s not leave out the, handsome man with no shirt on; great abs, drinking a coke cola in one hand and on the tailgate of his pick up sits a large order of fries and a double cheeseburger. Fast food advertising focuses on all ages of consumers.
Sex is everywhere. It's in every magazine, on every television station, and in every movie. Sex appears in advertisements for everything from shoes to food to computers. It is understandable why advertisers use sex appeal since it sets their ads apart from the countless others. Ads with sex can be more memorable, but sometimes too much sex overpowers the ad, drawing attention away from the brand. Overdone sex appeal can offend the target audiences, therefore causing the ad to be ineffective. Sex in advertising also tends to stereotype women and be bias towards men. Overall sex appeal can be effective if used in the correct context, but can also render the ad ineffective if overdone.
Everyone is born with sexual desire (Kalb). Therefore, sex is sometimes successful when used in advertising to sell products because consumers can easily relate to its tempting value (“Does Sex Really Sell?”). Sex in advertising is the use of explicit sexual content or suggestions in order to sell a service or product. It has been stated that sex is one of the primal urges found in humans, and “this underlying, pre-programmed disposition to respond to sexual imagery is so strong, it has been used for over 100 years in advertising” (Sugget). However, using sex in advertising to sell products is only successful if the right group of people are targeted, the product is sex-related, or the advertising company is popular and well-experienced enough to correctly use this marketing strategy.