Sexualization Of Women In Advertising

Have you ever considered the impact that the songs you listen to, the advertisements you are exposed to, the Netflix you binge, has on the image of a woman? Gender expectations, standards, beliefs are all impacted by what one sees and hears. The portrayed role of a female can have a lasting effect on the way one perceives women and girls, as well as on self image. When that portrayal is sexualized and objectified, it holds an even greater impact. One that can easily be taken in a negative manner. Women are subject to sexualization across multiple platforms of media, including music, video games, advertisements, and sports.

When it comes to the music industry, women are predominantly hypersexualized in this aspect of media. This can mainly

Advertisements are carefully constructed to appeal to the targeted audience. Products and ideas are sold through advertising across multiple platforms of the media, one being magazines. There is a significant amount of magazine ads that display women’s bodies through nudity and revealing clothes. Not only that, but many ads objectify women, as well as portray them as submissive. This allows for the continuance and implementation of gender stereotyping because, even though most people that see ads do not actively think about any deeper message they contain, seeing those ads has a subconscious effect on the way a person sees women or girls. Women are so frequently sexualized and objectified in media compared to men who, in general, have a more positive representation. This influences gender expectations and beliefs and can allow one to incorrectly perceive that men have more to offer than women and that women simply have a sexual and/or submissive role in life. Comparatively, body exposure of women in print ads occurs four times more than body exposure of men (Rosselli & Stankiewicz, 2008). Magazines that are marketed for men have a higher rate of advertisements portraying women as sex objects than any other magazine category. On average, women do not appear in most of the advertisements in men’s magazines but when they do, near 76% of them are portrayed as sex objects (Rosselli & Stankiewicz, 2008). It is not a far fetched idea to conceive that sex sells. But, men’s magazines are not the only magazines that feature scantily-clad women. Around 30% of advertisements in three popular U.S. women’s fashion magazines contained nude or under-clothed women, and more than half of advertisements in a popular U.S. women’s magazine objectified women (Rosselli & Stankiewicz, 2008). The self image of a woman or a girl can be negatively affected by these ads and that kind of impact