When’s the last time you saw a commercial that actually focused on the product a company is selling? Our television, magazines, Internet and billboards are full of so much clutter that it’s hard to know what they’re actually talking about.
According to Daily News, on an average day, Americans watch around five hours of TV. Roughly one-quarter of that programming is advertising.
Do you ever stop to think of what all of these advertisements are doing to get people to buy products? Probably not.
The objectification of women in advertising has skyrocketed, and that doesn’t make them too happy.
Sexual objectification is viewing people exclusively as depersonalized objects, rather than as real individuals with intricate personalities and feelings. This is done mainly with women, in which they focus on only the body or specific parts of the body to sexualize them and make them feel like objects.
Last week, the United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority banned a cellphone commercial in the U.K. for objectification of women.
For the first 40 seconds of the commercial, it’s hard to even know what the commercial is talking about. All you see is a half-naked woman joyfully prancing around in lingerie. She then proceeds to iron a long-sleeve button-down shirt and miraculously finds her phone in the shirt pocket. Then they continue on with the actual content of the commercial, which was for the new, “slimmest” phone, Kazam Tornado.
Because we are so desensitized to it, we don’t realize that this is only one of thousands of advertisements that objectify women.
Sexual objectification is so common that even women struggle to realize how damaging it is to them. This can cause women to feel as though it is empowering.
But being a sex object is anything but that.
Women, more so than men, have constant societal pressure to look, act, and perform a certain way. Exposure to the “ideal” body images has been found to lower women’s happiness with their appearances.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, girls are more likely than boys to experience depression. And, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, the mortality rate associated with anorexia nervosa is 12 times higher than the death rate associated with all causes of death for females 15-24 years old.
If you don’t see how objectification in the media directly harms women, one look at these statistics should prove you wrong.
So does sex actually sell? As much as we would all like to think this isn’t the case, it does work.
Advertisers use sex because they know it is relevant, effective and attracts attention. People can relate to the idea and it’s appealing to an audience because it’s exciting. As humans, we are hard-wired to notice sexual material.
“I definitely think sex sells in advertising, otherwise they are not going to use it,” said University associate professor of advertising Yongick Jeong. “But how, that is more important. Creating in advertising has to be new, and it has to be relevant.”
In advertising, there are other methods used besides sex and sexual objectification, Jeong said. In the U.S., the three Bs are used: beauty, baby and beast.
“These are all very popular and widely used. But the more accepted ideas are family or social relationships, justice, confidence and independence, and there are other ways too,” said Jeong. “Especially these three Bs, they work here, but they may not work in other cultures. But there are ones that are common in all of the cultures, like friendship and family.”
But there is some light at the end of the tunnel for women and advertisements.
In the past year especially, a fairly new type of advertising, called “femvertising” has been on the rise. Femvertising ads contain feminist messages that try to empower women, and it’s great for all the right reasons.
Just in the past year, ads that celebrate women rather than objectifying them have become widely popular.
Always’ #LikeAGirl ad, which showed the damaging stereotypes that are associated with being female, garnered a lot of positive feedback after people saw it during the Super Bowl.
“SheKnows,” a women’s lifestyle website, polled 628 women about their thoughts on femvertising and how they think it impacted women and the products they are purchasing.
They found that 91 percent of respondents found that the way women are portrayed has a direct correlation to a woman’s self-esteem, and 94 percent agree demonstrating women as sex symbols in advertisements is damaging.
Even Jeong agrees with the ideas of femvertising.
“Femvertising is way bigger these days,” Jeong said. “It started mostly from last year. Always, Lego, Dove, they all used the idea of femvertising. So femvertising works way better.”
In the past year, we have had a huge focus on authenticity. When something is authentic, then it is really relatable. Femvertising has strived to provide its viewers with a sense of authenticity that people can relate to.
Sex is slowly being replaced with these core-value ideas that everyone can relate to, and they are not damaging to women’s sense of self as well.
Maybe one day we will value women’s self-esteem over ad-generated revenue.
Jen Blate is a 24-year-old sociology junior from Miami, Florida. Jen can be reached on Twitter @Jblate_TDR.