Before writing this article, I decided to try out an experiment. I planned on going through all my "recommended" articles on Google and counting how many I went through before I saw some sort of advertising objectifying women. Sadly, the results were even worse than I expected. The very first article I clicked on had explicit advertisements of women, despite the fact that the article had nothing to do with the ad in question and the fact that I always click "Not interested" and "Stop showing me this ad" whenever I come across this kind of ad on the Internet. Ultimately, no matter how hard someone tries to escape this type of objectification in media, it will always be prevalent in the modern era.
As addressed in the documentary Miss Representation, companies' objectification of women in advertising leads to both men and women treating women like objects and giving them impossibly high physical standards, increasing the already high amount of sexism in the world. In this state, women are essentially given the same amount of respect as paintings: things that exist to be looked at, but that have no other value. When this stereotype is used in advertising, it causes the public to believe it more. As a result of that, objectifying women becomes a more effective advertising strategy, which spirals into a seemingly endless downward cycle. The state of women in advertising in the current era is the result of several of these cycles in the past. While modern feminist movements have become increasingly active (especially among younger generations), their positive impact has been somewhat cancelled out by this growing cultural cycle of objectification. Recent studies have shown that sexualization of women is still highly prevalent in advertising today, despite the modern political climate.
The only way to make a change in this type of conduct is for the cycle to be broken. Making corporations take responsibility in the way they portray women would be nearly impossible simply due to their nature. If exploiting women is seen as the most "profitable" option, companies will pursue it regardless of its societal impact. That means that the burden to make a change lies with the consumers, especially men. While there have always been attempts to educate about the dangers of sexism, the lessons are either given at an age where they will not make a true impact or not taken in-depth enough. Implementing an education program where young men are taught in their formative years about the dangers of treating women like objects in full detail would go a long way to enable better representation for women in media. This would ultimately create a more just society that is much safer for women and their rights. In addition, such a program could also teach young women about the dangers of basing their self-worth on surface-level comparisons like physical appearances. While it is highly unrealistic to assume that a few classes in school could fully eliminate female objectification in media, they would still at least go a long way to make an impact. At the end of the day, no matter how much we can try to blame corporations for the massive prevalence of objectification of women in advertising, the decisions of (mainly male) consumers have a much greater effect, so our goal should be to change their perspective as much as we can.
As addressed in the documentary Miss Representation, companies' objectification of women in advertising leads to both men and women treating women like objects and giving them impossibly high physical standards, increasing the already high amount of sexism in the world. In this state, women are essentially given the same amount of respect as paintings: things that exist to be looked at, but that have no other value. When this stereotype is used in advertising, it causes the public to believe it more. As a result of that, objectifying women becomes a more effective advertising strategy, which spirals into a seemingly endless downward cycle. The state of women in advertising in the current era is the result of several of these cycles in the past. While modern feminist movements have become increasingly active (especially among younger generations), their positive impact has been somewhat cancelled out by this growing cultural cycle of objectification. Recent studies have shown that sexualization of women is still highly prevalent in advertising today, despite the modern political climate.
The only way to make a change in this type of conduct is for the cycle to be broken. Making corporations take responsibility in the way they portray women would be nearly impossible simply due to their nature. If exploiting women is seen as the most "profitable" option, companies will pursue it regardless of its societal impact. That means that the burden to make a change lies with the consumers, especially men. While there have always been attempts to educate about the dangers of sexism, the lessons are either given at an age where they will not make a true impact or not taken in-depth enough. Implementing an education program where young men are taught in their formative years about the dangers of treating women like objects in full detail would go a long way to enable better representation for women in media. This would ultimately create a more just society that is much safer for women and their rights. In addition, such a program could also teach young women about the dangers of basing their self-worth on surface-level comparisons like physical appearances. While it is highly unrealistic to assume that a few classes in school could fully eliminate female objectification in media, they would still at least go a long way to make an impact. At the end of the day, no matter how much we can try to blame corporations for the massive prevalence of objectification of women in advertising, the decisions of (mainly male) consumers have a much greater effect, so our goal should be to change their perspective as much as we can.
It's interesting to consider that despite the modern political climate of women's equality being as progressive as it is (well at least sort of), the equality that's been achieved is still not accurately reflected in our media. In the Miss-representation video, it mentioned that this anomaly can be accredited to the disproportionate amounts of influence and power older men have on the industry. This polarity being the cause of the miss-representation makes one wonder that if the media is merely a reflection of the beliefs of the select few old men that hold power in the media, then could that mean that there is potential for a complete change in the portrayal of women in media as these aging boomers and gen Xs retire, and are replaced by millennials, who will potentially have more progressive views of women? Does this mean that with the inevitable changes to the beliefs held by the media workforce, there is hope for change?
ReplyDeleteIt definitely feels like as more young people take roles of power in media, representation for all people is getting slightly better. Hopefully, in the future, a more diverse or progressive set of people in charge of media will be able to make diversity more fair, but even those people grew up consuming the media created by older men, so they might subconsciously continue some of the stereotypes that are present in current media.
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