Media Criticism Assignment: Sexism in Advertisements

Authors Avatar

Communication 260

Media Criticism Assignment:

Sexism in Advertisements

In the world of advertising, the phrase: “SEX, sells” has been used repeatedly.  It seems as if the oppression of women in ad campaigns is what helps generate attention and profit for products.  Not only do such ever-present images encourage and reinforce our society to equate sex as a commodity, but they strengthen stereotypes of women as sex objects and have the capability to promote violence against women.  Sexism in advertisements has become one of the key ingredients to producing and running a successful ad campaign.  Everywhere we turn, advertisements are continuously telling us what it would take for us to be deemed desirable as men and women.  For a man, in order to be desirable, one must be successful, rich and powerful.  However, in order to be successful as a woman, all subliminal messages share a common theme: Beauty is what is needed in order to be successful.  

As a woman, I know first-hand how it feels to be continually judged and compared to the various examples of beauty and perfection that is supplied by the advertisement industry.  Women are criticized and judged on their bodies and how they look every day; advertisements have a tendency to suggest that women should change their appearance to fit a stereotypical ideal of beauty. I believe that it is extremely important that women of all shapes, sizes, and ethnicities be aware that the unrealistic images of beauty are merely “eye candy” with the sole purpose of attracting an audience.  Advertisements try to offer us a unique opportunity to study their construction of beauty because our culture glorifies the very idea the “beautiful ideal”, thereby, creating an exemplary female prototype.  Through advertisements, both print and commercial, women have long been represented in a problematic and often deplorable fashion.  For instance, as women are continuously positioned and portrayed as sexual objects in advertisements, negative debate has always followed.  

Sexism is both a prominent and extremely powerful aspect of both commercial and print advertisements.  Sexist advertisements have the power to intrigue potential consumers, and they are also capable of influencing a potential viewers’ self-image.  For example, advertisements that portray women as nurturing housewives, have a tendency to set in motion the idea that women are domestic and submissive; while advertisements that capitalize off of half-naked women, have a tendency to stimulate the idea that women are tempting, promiscuous sex kittens.  Women’s bodies are time and again divided and treated as separate parts; thereby creating an idealized concept that a woman’s body is somehow separate from her emotions, her mind and her spirit.  For the duration of this paper, I will attempt to explain why commercial and print advertisements need to be revolutionized. Such advertisements misrepresent, demean and categorize women as stereotypical objects of sexuality, beauty and/or domesticity.  First, I am going to investigate how sexist advertisements glorify women as sexual objects and how they have the power to objectify women’s roles in society.

Join now!

Sexist advertisements seem to nonchalantly glorify the idea that women are sexual objects.  According to Spectator, thousands of advertisements focus on women and young girls, telling them that they are not attractive, sexy, or intelligent unless they look a certain way (Levy, 2006).  As a result, men and women have developed an unflattering and stereotypical idea of what female beauty and sexuality really is.  As stated by Peter and Valkenburg, the relationship between exposure to a sexualized media environment and exposure to sexual content in general, has a stronger associative effect on the belief that women are in fact, sexual ...

This is a preview of the whole essay