Advertising

I remember learning about advertising from my father, the publisher of a girlie/literary magazine. He said all advertising was sexual. When I was about eleven years old he showed me a liquor ad, the picture was of a short glass about half full with a golden-brown liquid. Their were two or three large brightly lit ice-cubes in the glass. He said if I looked at the ice cubes carefully I would see a penis penetrating a vagina. I looked and looked but my pre-pubescent self could not see it. I think I understood, though, that this advertiser was selling alcohol by selling sex. My father said that even though the sex was hidden it still played on our unconscious minds. This felt a bit scary and dangerous to me. I did not like the idea that I was being manipulated by imagery I couldn’t even see. Later as a young adult, I decided not to look at any ads, if I could help it. I averted my eyes from ads in newspapers and magazines and did not watch commercial tv. 

My Father's Magazine

Thirty five years later I now sometimes stare hard at advertisements to see if I can find the sexual component. Of course advertisers use other means to get us to buy their products often by playing on our fears and insecurities. One ad that is currently running along the Times Square subway tunnel is for a brand that sells beauty products. There are a half-dozen life sized posters, each of a young woman’s face and torso. The women are diverse and their expressions and attitudes are varied. On the top of each poster in large white type it reads “Too emotional” or “Too strong,” or “Too opinionated.” On all the posters the “too” has been crossed out. The ad seems to be saying that sometimes young women are called, too tough or too sassy as a put down. However, women should be proud to showcase their vulnerability, toughness and ideas, at least this brand believes women should. And the feminist women who pass by can identify and feel good about this representation of themselves. But who is selling us our liberation from shame? The company, Olay, that sells beauty products to women implying that their faces need to be covered and beautified, their course skin made supple. The cynical manipulation inherent in such advertising is distressing. In an article in The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/12/femvertising-branded-feminism Nosheen Iqbal gives many examples these types of ads which some are referring to as “femvertising.” Femvertising is advertising that sells female empowerment instead of sex. But not really, of course, the agenda of these advertisements and the companies that pay for them is not to empower you but to get you to buy their products. They don’t really mean for you to challenge female oppression They are not telling women to go out and fight for equal pay. I’m sure they don’t pay their own female and male employees the same wages. Advertising in all it’s various forms is ubiquitous.

Today, I carry advertisements in my pocket. Almost every app I open and read has moving advertisements trying to get me to feel something and buy something. This small phone that I have contains more media content than I could ever read or look at in my life time. The phone has become part of my body. I outsource gaps in my memory by looking up definitions in a dictionary. I search the maps for directions to places I have visited often but forgotten how to get to. I find out what it feels like outside by opening a weather app from my couch. I am a part of social media, social being virtual and media being somewhat crafted by me. I have a social media identity that is separate from my other identities. I look at the virtual identities of relatives, friends, acquaintances and people I do not know forgetting that I am seeing only one controlled aspect of who they are. Apps like Facebook and Instagram only create a voyeuristic/narcissistic relationship. Facebook’s advertising is complex. There are the more traditional ads selling products and then there are posts that sell ideologies. Like ads, the sites are designed to arouse intense feelings in the viewer. But unlike ads the product becomes propaganda. Currently, there is a war in Libya that is being fought on the ground but also on Facebook. So called keyboard warriors are creating fake news and posting coordinates for their side to bomb. Fake news, real news, social media, the movies, television, magazines, books: All forms of media have at least one goal in common and that is to manipulate our feelings and way of thinking. That in and of itself is not a danger. As long as I am not a passive recipient and am willing to do the work necessary to analyze media’s form and critique its intent, I am a bit more prepared to figure out why the message is being sent and what the messenger wants from me.