blog assgn. - advertising media and feminism

blog assignment - RA

The developments in pop culture and its impact on feminism are definitely most prominently visible in the form on mass communication and media. Furthermore, advertising is the most widely used pop culture item and it is seen almost everywhere in tabloids, magazines, television commercials, billboards and also movies.

In the recent times advertisements have actually been successful in creating a stereotype on how women need to be portrayed to see products. Advertisements in the modern world have become the key to defining the codes of sexuality and sensual-ness. Feminism is being routinely disparaged and the way women are depicted is leading to the disempowerment of feminism.

The purpose of ads is to convey to the audience why and how the specified product would make their lives better, luxurious and be a good use of their hard- earned money. But these days, this very purpose is dissolved by ads that only play with the human minds and as ziesler mentions in her book revolve around themes pertaining to male gaze. Though, the male gaze in the recent times is also applicable to women seeing themselves through the eyes of men, it is still the male that is the watcher of the woman depicted to be no more than a sexual and erotic object. Like john Berger says, the sexualization of women in advertisements is not helping in bridging the inequalities of gender but is reassuring men of their sexual power and at the same moment deny any sexuality of women other than the male construction. Placing a man in the woman's place would be considered atrocious by the audience as it does not satisfy the assumptions of a likely viewer. These assumptions have come up only due to the changes brought by pop culture in the advertisements. We are actually being forced by the ad-makers to gaze at the female's body and not the product itself. Another cheap trick is that the advertisement expects to provoke feminist condemnation as a means of generating publicity.

Drugs, sex and violence are the three prominent things that sell the most these days and advertisements leave no stone un-turned in displaying their products by linking feminism with these motifs.

As we can see in these ads, the woman in them have almost no role to play. They are not only the objects of male gaze but also the products that are being bought and sold in an indirect way.

In the Sisley clothing ad, the product is being shown as an irresistible drug and the women in this ad as junkies who can’t imagine not living without this particular item of clothing. This ad is targeted for the female audience and looking at this ad would make them think about and desire the product in the same way the females in it do so.

The hunky dory chips ad on the other hand is trying to sell its product using the visions of sex. Let alone the vulgar image with the female showing her cleavage, the caption itself is very provocative and un-necessary for a food product. Men are such beings who can’t resist gazing at the woman in this picture and thus the product too would indirectly appeal to them.

On the contrary, men have been least effected in the way they are shown in advertisements. There is minimal vulgarity and shredding of clothes in the ads they are in and also the ads would focus more on the product than on the model displaying it. 

I would conclude by saying that, though pop culture and advertisements in particular play a pivotal role in our daily life, there is a grave need to change the way feminism is being negatively impacted and to reform the status and potaryal of women depicted in these forms of mass media.

“woman displayed as sexual object is the leit- motif of erotic spectacle" - mulvey.