, Research Paper
The Oppression of Females in Advertising:
Desirable behavior is sought by people throughout the world based on how one is brought up and the expectations one is bombarded with on a daily basis. When people begin to form certain expectations in life there begin to be formed stereotypes. It is from here that advertising finds its most potent weapons. By focusing on these culturally formed stereotypes they can explicitly affect people, and by feeding on these implicitly realized characteristics of people they can also affect behavior. This seems relatively harmless to the advertiser who simply wants to sell his/her product, but it becomes harmful when it begins to perpetuate certain undesirable stereotypes to the point of cementing them in impressionable minds. The depiction of females in advertising perpetuates these stereotypes and robs other females of the chance to form original opinions.
Using the ads presented here as examples, the portrayal of women can be broken down into several categories. First is the idea of beauty. The bulk of each ad is devoted to the beautification of women’s hair, face, and body. Women are bombarded with airbrushed, perfectly lit, constantly happy pictures of gorgeous models that portray every ideal of our society. The main themes are the following: makeup, perfume, breasts and cleavage, and lots of skin. First makeup. Women are not expected to be presentable without the help of the latest chemical technique to remove blemishes, darken eyes, lengthen lashes, coat the lips, and remove shine. Next is the depiction of perfumes. The basic concepts behind perfume ads are of sex, intimacy, exotic drugs, and escape from reality. By protraying the scents as some sort of exotic pheromone they seem to insinuate that one will be completely irresistible and that without the use of perfume one could never attract a man. Then there are the actual models. These women break the school girl norm that the average women was brought up holding true. The models reveal a plethora of flesh not accepted as norm within this society. This conflicts greatly with how much the average female reveals. The reality is that North America is not just all white beautiful, young, healthy, in shape, well – off people running around with no care except the lates fashion trends. It is time corporations stop showering women with a desirable image that they cannot hope to attain.
If one stops to consider the impressionability of the human mind, especially the young ones, it becomes frightening to think that these blatant stereotypical depiction’s can be picked up in any library or drugstore for anyone to read. Of course I believe that people should be allowed to formulate their own opinions and have freedom to read and look at whatever they choose, but I feel that the people developing these advertisements should act with a little more responsibility towards society and pay more attention to what they are printing.