The objectification of women in online advertising - Essay Example

?The objectification of women in online advertising: Media is often blamed for sexual objectification of women. Half naked decorated images of women which saturate online magazines all over the Internet has caused feminists to animatedly argue among themselves about different ways by which media degrades women in the name of empowering them. People describe themselves as citizens of a liberal society today in America and yet, they prefer to stay in a state of oblivion in reference to exploitation of women in different advertisements which target the male population. This is because despite modernity and liberalism, our societal makeup still lends stability to the idea of male dominance. Therefore, women are being used by men and their bodies are glorified in images in the interest of male population. Adverts fully comply with the standards of female beauty by showing slender and exquisite women who are meant to instantly catch the eye of a male viewer. Call it sexism or objectification, this kind of online advertising is an open threat to women because it reinforces their inferiority to men. It makes these arguments that women can be handled by men like submissive automatons more emphatic because women, in deed, appear to be submissive given the way they are made to strike myriad poses for the male gaze. The purpose of this essay is to explore how subtly media through online advertising seeks to spread the ideology of male dominance in the society by objectification of women. The following discussion will also scrutinize a collection of adverse influences executed on women by this manipulative practice. It is suggested that female objectification is actually an iceberg and sexual objectification is only the visible tip of this iceberg (Goh-Mah, 2013). While some see no problem with the media environment in the US which is sexually charged and adamantly defend singularly offensive poses in the name of liberalism, others refuse to believe in this hypocritical charade and question its potential to adversely affect giant masses of women across the globe. Many, acutely distressed by the way women are presented to promote various products and brands, even call for the force of law to prevent the way by which media seeks to further its horrendous interests which have grave social repercussions. The female body parts are made way more pronounced than the product promoted because advertising aims to promote women as sexual objects (Pardun, 2013, p. 116). Not only these images make a point of accentuating different parts of a female body to make them “fit into an ever narrowing ideal of female beauty” (Goh-Mah, 2013), they also attempt to add a hint of sarcastic humor to them. In this way, the online advertising producers end up creating such images which not only unreasonably expose a woman to even promote products like beer or a shoe, but also present objectionably weird poses which help men derive satisfaction from them. A kind of media environment which places less emphasis on sex is required to ensure “better public health for American youth” (Pardun, 2013, p. 116) which is the main target of these advertisements. However, this end cannot be achieved if even ads meant to sell jeans display skinny models in panties whose breasts are magnified by photoshop techniques. It is suggested through creators of such ads to women that by getting their jeans, they too can have bodies “that any woman would want to see and touch” (Pardun, 2013, p. 116). Such is the ideology upon which modern online advertising is based. There are many hidden aspects of the issue of sexual objectification in online advertisements. This issue started around the 1970s, but is rampant in the present age (Heldman, 2012). These aspects need to be properly explored to dispel the ambiguousness enveloping myriad riddles which have been the source of discomfort for women and feminists for quite long now. Many approaches have been used by scholars over the years to understand and analyze different media through which women are exploited to make male dominance emphatic despite changing trends. Radical feminism is one such approach which digs with acute intelligence into reasons behind reduction of women to mute sex objects designed to be “sexually alluring, sexually available and sexually subordinate to men” (Pierson, 1993, p. 108). Radical feminist analysis of male dominance stresses that the women who are reduced to objects in the pictures which saturate the Internet currently do not engage in this pitiful practice out of free will, but are faced with a compulsion to do so. This is because clearly, majority of these women are very effectively made victims of oppression before they even know it by the media masters of manipulation. In the industrialized culture of the Western society, there are excessive pressures on women “to be the object of the male gaze” (Pierson, 1993, p. 109). They are confronted with these paralyzing pressures due to the tendency of media to objectify women. The sexual nature of the online advertisements is to be blamed for forcing all women to fit in the criteria of ideal female form. It is this destructive ideology sponsored by the modern advertisement trends that is responsible for making all women, particularly the youth, do anything including starving themselves to meet the impossible standards defined by online ads. The eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia are extremely common in the US as a consequence of this ideology fostered by sexually charged advertisement culture (Pierson, 1993, p. 109). Defenders of reducing women to lifeless objects for the viewing pleasure of heterosexual male viewers argue that there is nothing wrong with sexually provocative online advertising. If anyone objects to it, it is their problem with the modern trends of the 21st century. If they cannot or are not willing to broaden their minds according to cultural trends of the contemporary times, it does not mean that they should call for the force of law to dispel the normal practice of using women to attract customers. Radical feminists may disapprove of this to their hearts’ content, but what they must not do is try to attract the law to the issue of online advertising. It is quite surprising how these liberal critics avoid acknowledging that only one message is conveyed by sexual portrayal of women in the ads to the society. This message is that what the ads suggest, sexual exploitation, this is exactly “what women are, what women are for” (Barnett, 2013, p. 294). These critics manage to get past the humiliating images of women in which they are deliberately positioned, so as to reinforce their inferiority, without feeling any contempt for the people who create such despicable images. Sure through this time-worn advertising technique they manage to attract a large number of customers (Pardun, 2013, p. 116), but the social status of one gender gets badly compromised in the process. Yet, the significance of this exploitation in online ads is not acknowledged at a political level (Barnett, 2013, p. 294). It is due to messages conveyed about female submission through online media that women in all social areas have to suffer the consequences of male violence which may take several forms. This is because online advertising on the Internet plays a very powerful role of promoting wrong ideas in the society and reinforcing centuries old patriarchal interests (Barnett, 2013, p. 295). General assumption is that other countries in the world should take America’s lead given how women enjoy empowerment in this country. But, after looking at an ocean of pictures on the Internet in which women are positioned so as to accentuate their body parts, it becomes quite difficult to decide if women in the US are really empowered or powerless victims of male dominance. It is also hard to decide from these online adverts if female bodies are intended to be advertised or the products which are barely prominent in the images compared to the models who endorse them. The intention, clearly, is “to preserve male dominance and patriarchy” (Baker, 2008, p. 95). These advertisements may not be sexually explicit like pornographic images, but they still heavily promote degrading attitudes towards women (Cynthia, 2003, p. 1910). Proponents of modern online advertising argue that considering the images of women, which glorify women and appreciate their beauty, morally or socially offensive is both conservative and objectionable. This is because financial survival of millions of women depends on this medium all of whom consent to pose as asked by the advertisement people. If these women are willing to pose provocatively or strip down to nothing almost, it is between them and the people who make these ads. All parties involved in these online advertisements are consenting adults and if any third party vocally objects to it, then there objections are just infringements on the rights of these women. By presenting such arguments, these liberals “refuse to accept the cost of their liberalism” (Cynthia, 2003, p. 1914). Instead of taking responsibility for how these innocent and beautiful women are exploited by men in power to promote their products in the advertisements, defenders of modern online ads present themselves as champions of women’s rights. They argue that modern advertisements are actually no longer as stereotyped as suggested by feminists (Slattery, 2003, p. 116). But, ruthlessly taking advantage of someone’s financially disadvantaged life situation and equating it to championing women’s rights is empty mockery which should be condemned on every societal level. Many of these online images show headless women with the rest of their body parts excessively accentuated to achieve the desired effect of eliminated individuality. Many ads by American Apparel attempt to achieve the same effect by offensively “showing women from behind, which adds another layer of sexual violability” (Heldman, 2012). The controversial nature of these ads shows that the pace of the phenomenon of female objectification in media is more aggressive in popular culture than it was a few decades ago. This has changed American society into an objectifying society (Heldman, 2012). The principal message conveyed by online advertisements places a huge social burden on other women too who are not a part of these advertisements. This is because a social culture is created consequently which motivates people to distinguish women from one another on grounds of sex appeal. Sexual harassment of women in American culture is entrenched in abusive advertising among other things. Such advertising in the form of a very prominent cultural force promotes this ideology that it is the prerogative of men to dominate women and see them as sexual objects (Baker, 2008, p. 95). There are many theories which help to analyze objectification of women in the media. Male gaze theory of Laura Mulvey is one such example which explains how the element of exploitation in advertisements leads to psychological oppression of the subordinated female models. This theory suggests that objectification has given women a passive and men an active role given the fact that women are treated as images with men being bearers of the look. This means that the duty of women is to appear silent but perfectly beautiful, while the prerogative of men is to enjoy gazing at those silent but pretty images. This media pattern lends stability to male dominance and female submission. This is why the focus is always concentrated on male gaze in advertisements by objectifying female bodies. It promotes this ideology that men should be active gazers, while women should be flawlessly pretty objects to be looked at and enjoyed by the other gender. To augment this ideology, women are always presented as objects of sexual desire unable to speak for themselves and this satisfies the sexual pleasure of male lookers. Reducing women to sexual objects in visual culture is quite common. The theory professes that according to American visual culture including films, advertisements, and photographs, the gaze always has to be male and the object to which this gaze is directed at has to be female. In order to properly satisfy this determining male gaze and preserve the concept of patriarchy, the female form should be fiercely styled for the resulting image to be described as sexually charged by the men (Arp, 2013, p. 856). For this purpose, women are styled and presented as erotic objects in the online advertisements because the objective of ad creators is that male gaze should not be disappointed. The entire media industry operates to reach this objective and its success also depends on delivering this particular quality to the customers. Hall’s theory of encoding and decoding and Roland Barthes’ concept of myth also help to understand female objectification in advertisements. Both concepts explain why women are pressured by men to fit into the beauty ideal which is getting narrower and more impossible with time. According to Hall, communicating a message is encoding and interpreting it is decoding. The perception of the gender roles as codified in advertisement messages represents the values of a society because these codes are actually “the fragments of ideology of the society in which they are created and employed” (Hall, 1993, p. 513). This means that online advertisements in the US objectify women because it is their attempt at getting their messages coded into the language of a patriarchal society which enjoys male dominance. Once these messages are coded, they hold the potential to represent the values of a society. This means that the American visual culture regularly objectifies women because this practice has become a social value and a cultural norm. Like Hall, Barthes also suggests that the social world is highly influenced by a range of visual signs and advertising images form an important example of such signs. Like the encoding/decoding model suggests that advertisements portray women as sexual objects to lend stability to the social order which is patriarchal in nature, Barthes stresses that creators of advertisements engage in making of myth by sending a specific kind of messages to the viewers of the images. People on the receiving end belong to the dominant male group and people at the projecting end construct messages which comply with the prevalent social and cultural values. It is suggested that advertisements heavily depend on incorporating myths “by using already meaningful signs in an attempt to attach mythic signification to products” (Illergard, 2004). All these theoretical perspectives are important tools which help to explain how the idea of male dominance is preserved and reproduced in the online advertisements. In conclusion, sexual objectification of women is a sad practice which is not only evident in online advertisements or magazines, but goes much further than that as it is deeply entrenched in our society. It is quite shameful how despite becoming technologically so advanced and surpassing many others countries on myriad levels, millions of women in the US continue to be objectified in the online ads and no one in the society even complains about it, except a few feminist activists whose vocal objections are barely recognized at a political level. Turning women into mindless but sexual objects for marketing purpose and to satisfy the interests of male viewers reinforces this ideology that women are inferior and the only thing that can lend them superiority over one another is physical beauty. References: Arp, R. (2013). 1001 Ideas That Changed the Way We Think. China: Simon and Schuster. Baker, C.N. (2008). The Women’s Movement Against Sexual Harassment. Cambridge University Press. Barnett, H. (2013). Introduction to Feminist Jurisprudence. Great Britain: Routledge. Cynthia, C. (2003). Violence And The Media. Great Britain: McGraw-Hill International. Goh-Mah, J. (2013, Jun 10). The Objectification of Women - It Goes Much Further Than Sexy Pictures. HUFFPOST LIFESTYLE. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/joy-goh-mah/objectification-women-sexy-pictures_b_3403251.html Hall, S. (1993). Encoding, Decoding. In S. During (Ed.), The cultural studies reader (pp. 507-517). London: Routledge. Heldman, C. (2012, Jul 03). Sexual Objectification, Part 1: What is it? Retrieved from http://msmagazine.com/blog/2012/07/03/sexual-objectification-part-1-what-is-it/ Illergard, J. (2004). GENDER, POWER, AND WORK IN TV-ADVERTISEMENTS. Retrieved from http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=1355370&fileOId=1355371 Pardun, C.J. (2013). Advertising and Society: An Introduction. UK: John Wiley & Sons. Pierson, R.R. (1993). Canadian Women’s Issues: Strong voices. Volume I. Canada: James Lorimer & Company. Slattery, M. (2003). Key Ideas in Sociology. Spain: Nelson Thornes. Read More