Women In Advertising

2 Pages 539 Words

Women in Advertising

In the film Killing Us Softly 3, portrayals of women are most always depicted as inferior, helpless, objects, physically perfect, and intellectually invaluable. The advertising industry started in the seventies as a twenty billion dollar business and has grown since then to a giant one hundred and eighty billon dollar big business. United states citizens are exposed to over three thousand ads in a single day. With that many ads exposed to a person in a day it would be pretty difficult not to be influenced by them. One product’s slogan was “In your face all over the place”.
Women in our society are expected to be physically flawless for the most part. Advertisement is great proof of that. Very rarely do I see an overweight homely woman in a television commercial. Almost always the women are white, tall, skinny, broad shouldered, have small waists and long legs. These women represent only five percent of the women in this country. Some of the women in ads are not even real. Airbrushing, and computer generated images are being used now. This portrayal of women in ads may drive some young girls to strive for the same looks when it is physically impossible. The film said that one in five women have eating disorders. Could this be a result of advertising?
Many ads tend to objectify women by focusing on a single part of their body; this turns women into objects, things not people. Thinking of someone as less than human makes it very easy to abuse and even in some cases kill another. Domestic violence has become somewhat of an epidemic in this country in this day and age, maybe some of it has to do with the way women are viewed and portrayed in the media.
Body language says a lot in advertisement. Much of the time females are photographed with a man looking down at her showing dominance. Women are also usually pictured inactive and helpless. This holds true unless race is involved, then the ...