Dr Mohamed Kirat
By Dr Mohamed Kirat
Sex sells, this is the motto of professionals of marketing and advertising. In the world of advertising, companies tend to use images they believe will help to make their product sell. These images tend to include things like making the product look like it works far better than its competitors’ and everyone being generally happy about using whatever the product may be. But with these images come images that reinforce stereotypes such as those about women. In today’s world, there aren’t many ads that don’t include either an image of a young attractive woman or a woman that is busy doing housework. These types of images portray women only as sex objects or as subservient housewives of their husbands.
Though on the rise, it is still very rare to see a woman portrayed in a position of power in advertisements. Advertisers are still under the impression that “sex sells” and that women are still the only ones doing housework. Studies of advertisements in a variety of men’s, women’s, and general interest magazines have categorised women in various roles: housewife, decorative element, sex object, and dependent on men. The objectification of women has for the most part always existed in advertising and has been the driving force behind many feminist movements. Sexism towards women in advertising has always been an issue in the history of American society and Western societies. Today you can find it in all four corners of the globe. Women have always been expected to fill specific gender roles as the cleaning, cooking, or child-bearing sex machine. Today’s society has most certainly evolved to where such discrimination is discouraged and looked down upon.
Ads in the 1950s most commonly advertised wives being completely controlled and influenced by their husbands, feminine products to help impress their husbands, cleaning products, and endless cooking and references to the benefits of staying in the kitchen.
The field of advertising is male dominated where women are victims of popular culture. The female figure that is given to audience is constructed — what women should look like, how they should act — is determined by men. As a result, how women should look like, how they should act — is determined by men. As a result, society has been facing many epidemics. Women and their body parts sell everything from cold drinks to body spray. Advertisements contain various symbolic messages in an attempt to reach their target audience. They present pleasing images in messages in an attempt to reach their target audience. Images convey information, influence style, determine consumption and mediate power pleasure and displeasure, influence and mediate power relations. Such images easily influence the target audience. Then the audience immediately wants to interact with images to shape fantasies and desire.
Many countries in the world today are consumption driven societies, and advertising is well integrated because each person is exposed to commercials, billboards, flyers, internet,
magazines etc.
For instance, people in the United States are exposed to more than two thousand ads every day, and watching television commercials alone constitutes over a year of one’s life. Advertising is a $250bn industry, with powerful driving indicators of how people are supposed to feel, act, and look. Advertisements construct normalcy.
Specifically, women in advertising are being symbolised as objects of desire and as commodities, rather than human beings. Specific poses characterise women as vulnerable and weak individuals, showing only partial body parts. Nonsexual products, such as food, are sexualised and convey women as products. All of these have implications on how a woman sees herself in the mirror. Women are frequently photographed in defenseless poses, often with their mouths covered either by their own hands, a man’s hands or by the product. This creates the illusion of a woman hiding behind her own body, or shows her as a weak character. Some ads present the “romantic stranger,” with burly male characters lurking in the background shadows with the woman in the foreground expecting a passionate situation.
These ads are explicitly sexualising violence. Exemplifying the situation, some ads in fashion magazines have even shown women as the victim of murder. Another shoe commercial uses “keep her in her place” as the catchphrase. Most often, men are portrayed as strong, independent, and dignified in ads. Men and boys are repeatedly shown being successful and standing with their shoulders pushed back, chest out, and legs spread out in a stout stance, using more space. Conversely, women often act as if they were trying to literally disappear. In magazines, women’s bodies are often zoomed on to show certain parts explicitly. This creates a situation where women are used as a commodity to sell their bodies, rather than selling the products. This might be one reason why sex is not an effective way to sell a product, since the target audience for these jeans and many other products are women, not men. However, the worse a woman feels about herself, the more improvements she will try to make in order to conform to impossible ideals.
Photographs of women are doctored with Photoshop, often with many people working on the photo twenty to thirty times; literally, different body parts are pieced together to form an artificial woman that doesn’t exist. Cindy Crawford once said, “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford”. This is a striking example of how the image of a woman is artificially created through technology. Adding another layer to the problem of objectification, the thinner a woman looks, the more value is added to her as a person. Women’s clothing bluntly tells a woman that she should strive to be a size 0, or the new size 00. According to commercials, women are expected to strive to become “nothing.”
There is the real tragedy, that many women internalise the stereotypes and learn their limitations, thus establishing a self-fulfilling prophecy. Is it about time to humanise advertising and look at the woman in it as a wife, a daughter, a sister and a mother. After all a woman is a human being and not an object?
The writer is a professor of Public Relations and Mass Communication at the College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University.
The Peninsula
By Dr Mohamed Kirat
Sex sells, this is the motto of professionals of marketing and advertising. In the world of advertising, companies tend to use images they believe will help to make their product sell. These images tend to include things like making the product look like it works far better than its competitors’ and everyone being generally happy about using whatever the product may be. But with these images come images that reinforce stereotypes such as those about women. In today’s world, there aren’t many ads that don’t include either an image of a young attractive woman or a woman that is busy doing housework. These types of images portray women only as sex objects or as subservient housewives of their husbands.
Though on the rise, it is still very rare to see a woman portrayed in a position of power in advertisements. Advertisers are still under the impression that “sex sells” and that women are still the only ones doing housework. Studies of advertisements in a variety of men’s, women’s, and general interest magazines have categorised women in various roles: housewife, decorative element, sex object, and dependent on men. The objectification of women has for the most part always existed in advertising and has been the driving force behind many feminist movements. Sexism towards women in advertising has always been an issue in the history of American society and Western societies. Today you can find it in all four corners of the globe. Women have always been expected to fill specific gender roles as the cleaning, cooking, or child-bearing sex machine. Today’s society has most certainly evolved to where such discrimination is discouraged and looked down upon.
Ads in the 1950s most commonly advertised wives being completely controlled and influenced by their husbands, feminine products to help impress their husbands, cleaning products, and endless cooking and references to the benefits of staying in the kitchen.
The field of advertising is male dominated where women are victims of popular culture. The female figure that is given to audience is constructed — what women should look like, how they should act — is determined by men. As a result, how women should look like, how they should act — is determined by men. As a result, society has been facing many epidemics. Women and their body parts sell everything from cold drinks to body spray. Advertisements contain various symbolic messages in an attempt to reach their target audience. They present pleasing images in messages in an attempt to reach their target audience. Images convey information, influence style, determine consumption and mediate power pleasure and displeasure, influence and mediate power relations. Such images easily influence the target audience. Then the audience immediately wants to interact with images to shape fantasies and desire.
Many countries in the world today are consumption driven societies, and advertising is well integrated because each person is exposed to commercials, billboards, flyers, internet,
magazines etc.
For instance, people in the United States are exposed to more than two thousand ads every day, and watching television commercials alone constitutes over a year of one’s life. Advertising is a $250bn industry, with powerful driving indicators of how people are supposed to feel, act, and look. Advertisements construct normalcy.
Specifically, women in advertising are being symbolised as objects of desire and as commodities, rather than human beings. Specific poses characterise women as vulnerable and weak individuals, showing only partial body parts. Nonsexual products, such as food, are sexualised and convey women as products. All of these have implications on how a woman sees herself in the mirror. Women are frequently photographed in defenseless poses, often with their mouths covered either by their own hands, a man’s hands or by the product. This creates the illusion of a woman hiding behind her own body, or shows her as a weak character. Some ads present the “romantic stranger,” with burly male characters lurking in the background shadows with the woman in the foreground expecting a passionate situation.
These ads are explicitly sexualising violence. Exemplifying the situation, some ads in fashion magazines have even shown women as the victim of murder. Another shoe commercial uses “keep her in her place” as the catchphrase. Most often, men are portrayed as strong, independent, and dignified in ads. Men and boys are repeatedly shown being successful and standing with their shoulders pushed back, chest out, and legs spread out in a stout stance, using more space. Conversely, women often act as if they were trying to literally disappear. In magazines, women’s bodies are often zoomed on to show certain parts explicitly. This creates a situation where women are used as a commodity to sell their bodies, rather than selling the products. This might be one reason why sex is not an effective way to sell a product, since the target audience for these jeans and many other products are women, not men. However, the worse a woman feels about herself, the more improvements she will try to make in order to conform to impossible ideals.
Photographs of women are doctored with Photoshop, often with many people working on the photo twenty to thirty times; literally, different body parts are pieced together to form an artificial woman that doesn’t exist. Cindy Crawford once said, “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford”. This is a striking example of how the image of a woman is artificially created through technology. Adding another layer to the problem of objectification, the thinner a woman looks, the more value is added to her as a person. Women’s clothing bluntly tells a woman that she should strive to be a size 0, or the new size 00. According to commercials, women are expected to strive to become “nothing.”
There is the real tragedy, that many women internalise the stereotypes and learn their limitations, thus establishing a self-fulfilling prophecy. Is it about time to humanise advertising and look at the woman in it as a wife, a daughter, a sister and a mother. After all a woman is a human being and not an object?
The writer is a professor of Public Relations and Mass Communication at the College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University.
The Peninsula
