“Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt”: Advertising and Violence, is written by Jean Kilbourne and focuses on the relationship between different advertising strategies and pornography, and also on the effects it has on society. “Men Conquer and Women Ensnare” (575) seems to be the way we see it these days. Kilbourne states “The main goal, as in pornography, is usually power over one another, either by the physical dominance of men or what is seen as the exploitive power of female beauty and female sexuality” basically meaning that advertising around the world has begun to glorify these stereotypical ideals of men and women. They make things like rape, violence, and viewing women as objects seem mainstream. The media does whatever it can to make money, even if that means dehumanizing people to the point where we are numb to the idea. She points out that we all like to believe we are unaffected by advertising, but in reality it is everywhere, and most of us don’t even realize how bad its become.
Some of these ads really got to me, I hadn’t realized how low our moral standard has become. Glorifying rape and violence is unacceptable, and what shocked me was how blatantly some ads reference date rape. One alcohol ad suggests “If your date won’t listen to reason, Try a velvet hammer” (581), while another includes a wolf among a flock of sheep behind a bottle of Smirnoff (582). Is Czech, a jean ad portrays a women being held by the back of her pants and grabbed by three men, this one baffled me. It was meant to sell jeans to women, and all I see is someone getting attacked. If you saw these thongs happen on the street, wouldn’t you jump in to help? Do people really walk around with these ridiculous ideas of how men and women should act? Why do we have this ‘anything goes’ attitude when it comes to selling a product and making money. I worry about young girls in other countries, because the ads in other places are increasingly alarming.
Nobody is safe when it comes to the sexuality of ads, and it has even gotten to the point where we use children. Where does the line cross to child pornography? They find very young girls to do nude shoots, and dress them up to look almost preteen. Once I looked at it this way, I was a little disgusted. It’s not fair to girls that we continuously get portrayed as these weak helpless beings, and I think in this day and age we should smarten up and stop. It’s already unsafe enough to be a young girl, and ads often exploit this. The gap between men and women is never going to close if we keep stressing all these stereotypes. An interesting point that Kilbourne makes references a Pepsi ad where young boys are staring up the skirt of Cindy Crawford, She asks us to think about if the situation was reversed, as in young girls looking at an older man. “We would fear for them, and rightly so” (589) Women are often seen as some kind of temptress, and it’s almost always the woman’s fault when something happens to her. It’s as if just being female is some sort of punishment, you get raped and it’s because of the way you dress. We are way more often seen as property and something everyone has the right to look at.
Maybe we are just reading to deeply into these ads, but it seems more like there just getting worse. It’s not just about beauty anymore, not just about how skinny you are. It’s more about shock value and what these companies can get away with. I hope someday people start to realize that ads like this are only going to take us backwards and that stereotypes are unfair and go against what it really means to be human.
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