Advertisements:What are they telling me?

               

               As we have discussed throughout our class, media images are created and spread with a purpose. No image is ever created on a whim. Advertisements, while shorter in length than films or books, are constructed in the same fashion. These ads are painstakingly created in order to inform the public of a product in hopes of making a profit. Advertisements have always been made to target groups of people through the association of power, wealth, and fame.  Ads sell promises, fantasies, and ideals. However, while ads are made for public consumption, they often employ detrimental and stereotypical imagery that perpetuates cultural stigmas in order to sell a product.

               Advertisements have become an ever present form of media in our lives. Ads are scheduled into television programs. They take up page upon page in magazines, and they are making their way into internet streaming domains. Advertisements, especially those played during the Super Bowl are discussed on a national level. Some ads can be funny, touching, or offensive, but in the end these ads are meant to encourage consumers to buy a product. When constructing an ad, advertisers create “images not only to attempt to sell a product by associating it with certain socially desirable qualities, but…[they attempt to] sell as well a worldview, a lifestyle, and a value system congruent with the imperatives of consumer capitalism (Kellner 127).” These ads sell consumers an idea of what is “normal," what is valuable, and what to do in order to attain value.

                     Advertisements, especially those targeted towards women and girls, construct images of an ideal woman. Ads such as these epitomize unhealthy standards of thinness, and convey the idea that a women’s worth is determined by her appearance rather than her thoughts or speech. These ads

ad illustrates the saying that 
women are meant to be heard
not seen.

echo the male as owner and female as object relationship that Laura Mulvey and John Berger critique in their works.  Ads such as these uphold the commonly held idea that a women should be seen, not heard.  Take for instance this ad which is meant to sell lipstick to young women. The ad does not use a woman to advertise the lipstick, only a pair of lips. This ad is placing value in part of a woman as opposed to her whole being. This undervaluing of women is further highlighted by the use of the pacifier. The pacifier when used in this manner is meant infantilize women. By using a pacifier, a tool to quiet or silence a child, this ad inherently states that womens’ words are akin to those of crying children, and therefore must be silenced. It is only her lips that have value and presence.

This women has her hand over her mouth
and is smaller than the perfume..
This is way of saying the perfume has
more value than her.

              This culturally held perception of women and girls in ads becomes more apparent when compared to ads featuring men and boys. In ads, women and girls are shown very delicately. Their eyes are cast downward, and they seem to pull away from the camera’s gaze. Often they place their hand over their mouth, which is another way of illustrating the idea that women do not need to speak in order to have presence. The images tell girls that they are and should be playful clowns that cannot

Notice that these men are given full body
shots. nothing stands in their way. they are free
to command that space. 

be taken seriously, and  appear off-balance, insecure, and weak (Deadly Persuasions 136). In contrast, boys are positioned upright, and they engage with the camera and surroundings in the ad. Some ads even captures boys in mid speech, thus encouraging boys to be outspoken. Ads such as these tell boys that they are meant to be commanding, powerful, and in control of their actions (Deadly Persuasions 136). These ads serve as a way to indoctrinate young people into their “assigned” gender roles and further uphold it for older men and women.

The preoccupation with lighter skin for
women of color is a way of making
standardizing diversity. 

                    Advertisements seem to play the same narrative of white female and white male over and over again. There is hardly any representation of black or Hispanic males or females in ads. If black or Hispanic males or female do appear, they are usually in the background, are featured less often than their white counterparts, or they are at the lighter side of the color spectrum. Blacks and Hispanics only appear more often when ads are specifically marketed for blacks and Hispanics. Apparently, the appeal of a product could be lost to the white demographic if black images are used (Steinem 174). Ads that are made like this serve as a way to erase the presence of diversity. They state that the norm is white, blonde, tall, and thin. They say that there is an acceptable skin tone that blacks and Hispanics must have in order to be valued. These ads can have a severe impact on the self-esteem of young people from diverse backgrounds.

                   This constant repetition of the white male white female relationship is one that inherently states that no other relationship but a heterosexual relationship  exists.  As discussed in Danae Clark’s Commodity Lesbian, the lesbian consumer market was not addressed because it was not easily identifiable, accessible, measurable, or profitable (143).  Hardly any ads openly appealed to the

Image meet the meets the requirements to be considered gay
window advertising. But, is it?

homosexual market out of fear that products would become negatively associated with homosexuality and avoided by the heterosexual market (Clark 143). Still, some advertisements
surreptitiously place the presence of homosexuality into their ads. Gay window advertising or advertising that avoids “explicit references to heterosexuality by depicting only one individual or same-sexed individuals within the representational frame (Clark 144),” is used to quietly insert gay representation into ads without upsetting the male female oriented standard. As a result of this covert representation, homosexuality in ads is “seen” based on the actual experience of the viewer, but it also conveys to us that homosexuality is something to be hidden. Ads that utilize the gay window strategy seem to glorify this “in the closet” mindset of homosexuality.

Example of using an ad to make a clear statement
on a social issue that effects so many.

                  Today ads convey a number of things to consumers. There are ads that still rely on stereotyped images and behaviors of men and women to assure sales profit. The notion that white, tall, blonde, and thin is the ideal is still upheld, and there are still advertisers and even consumers that will not acknowledge homosexual relationships in ads. However, there has been a visible push for ads to represent different body types, skin tones, and relationships. The Lane Byrant  campaign  #I'mnotanangel is meant to display various body types and racial backgrounds, the Tylenol’s #Howwefamily openly displays lesbian, gay and interracial couples. Women, even in cosmetic ads,have appeared more active than before. Ads have even taken on social issues such as sex trafficking, domestic abuse, health, and poverty. While these ads are still selling a product, they are not selling the once detrimental stereotyped images of what people should be. Instead, they are actively raising the consciousness and awareness of the general public.

Recent Gap ad for girls. Notice that these girls are
more active in their surrounding. 

               

Cited Works
Commodity Lesbian Danae Clark
Sex, Lies and Advertising Gloria Steinem
Deadly Persuasions: The More You Subtract, The More You Add Jean Killbourne
Reading Images Critically Douglas Kellner
Ways of Seeing John Berger
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema Laura Mulvey