The Objectification of Women

Below are images of body parts used to sell products.

Questions

  1. Look at the Bacardi ad.
  1. Look at the Aubade ad.
  1. Why do you think advertisers might choose to focus on only one body part?
  2. What is your reaction to advertisers using dismemberment as an advertising technique?
  3. What are some consequences of this technique? On our perceptions? Our attitudes?
Currently, legs seem to be a particularly popular body part on which to focus.

Questions

  1. Why do you think advertisers might choose to draw attention to legs?
  2. When advertisers choose to focus explicitly on legs, do they present a diversity of body types? Why do you think they portray legs the way they do?
  3. What are some possible effects on young girls and women of constantly seeing images like these? What about effects on young boys and men?
  4. In an analysis of the portrayal of women in rock videos a photographer states that they are often "merely outlines. Just shapes. Nothing inside matters. . . . They are just legs in high heels." What do you think he means when he says this? How does this connect with the constant focus on ‘legs in high heels’ in advertising?
  5. Other body parts in ads here

Women’s voices

There are many images in advertising that silence women – images that show women with their hands over their mouths and other visuals, as well as copy, that strip women of their voices.
The body language of young women and girls in advertising is usually passive and vulnerable. Conversely, the body language of men and boys is usually powerful, active and aggressive.

Questions

  1. Battering is the single greatest cause of injury to women in America. One third of women who are murdered in our country are killed by their husbands or partners. 1 in 4 women will be raped in her lifetime. When you look at the images above within the context of this rate of men’s violence against women in our culture, how do you respond to those images? Do you think that advertisers have a responsibility to the society to consider the attitudes that their images support?
  2. Why do you feel advertisers would use such images in the first place?
  3. Regardless of why they use them, what overall effect might such images have?
  4. Other images of bondage and silence

The selling of kids and sex

In recent years, mainstream media have increasingly traded in the sexualization of young girls and teenagers. More and more, we see teen models and icons captured in seductive poses that draw attention to their bodies. When teenagers emulate the celebrities and models they see repeatedly in media – whether in dress, style, attitude or behavior – they are in effect emulating a carefully crafted fiction that is expressly designed by marketers to be consumed as an object.

Below are three advertisements that ran in the September 2001 issue of Seventeen Magazine.
 

Questions:


Exercises
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