Weyenberg Advertisement Analysis

In 1974 the Weyenberg Shoe Manufacturing Company released an advertisement that depicted a woman lying naked on the floor behind a shoe, with the words “Keep her where she belongs...” pasted across the top. In March of 2013 musical artist Robin Thicke released a song titled “Blurred Lines,” and, with its catchy beat, it took the nation by storm. However, upon listening to the lyrics several people began to complain about the message of the song, one that perpetuates rape culture. A few days later in March the situation became even worse, when Thicke, along with T.I. and Pharrell, who were originally featured on the track, posted the music video to Youtube. In it, women are shown topless in nude thongs, crawling around on the floor and dancing

Advertisements have been featuring sexual images to increase sales since the nineteenth century, and the phrase ‘sex sells’ is so popular even children know it. From cigarettes to soap to underwear to jeans, sex is used to sell everything, and the image of a naked women is one of the most popular examples of this. In the Weyenberg advertisement, the woman is topless and completely uncovered by anything but her own arm, despite the fact that she is selling a shoe. There is no correlation between the object being sold and nudity, they are actually direct opposites, but the company will still use it because they are more likely to sell shoes to men if the advertisement makes them think of sex. This image of women has not changed in the four decades since this advertisement was created, and it is so normalized that most people never stop to think about what is so inherently wrong with that. In 2013, just three years ago, Robin Thicke released a song encouraging rape that was able to sell astronomically well, and then he posted a music video featuring topless women being used as sexual objects that encouraged sales even more, and all because it features women and sex. Both the advertisement from 1974 and the music video from 2013 present women as sexual objects as a way to increase sales of the product, and since they

The woman in the shoe advertisement is seen as belonging on the floor, on the same level as the man’s shoe. The image even includes the line “Keep her where she belongs...” implying that women belong on the ground, far below men. In 2013, a whole four decades later, Robin Thicke once again insinuates that women are lesser than men, and uses them as props in his music video. The women are not treated as people and are left without clothes to dance on the men and the props and to crawl around on the floor, while Thicke, T.I, and Pharrell are fully clothed and always standing upright. The goat and stuffed dog are given more respect within the video than the women, and one point Thicke blows cigarette smoke into the face of one of the women and makes her choke. Forty years of supposed growth and women are still just as much objects in media as toys and shoes. The women in the Weyenberg advertisement and Robin Thicke’s music video are both presented as lesser than men and are treated as nothing more than