Advertisements

    Starting from the class readings to class discussions about advertisements in America, I was surprised how sexism, racism, and power hierarchies are included in so advertisements in America and the research showed that the USA mostly shows the advertisements with sexism, racism and power hierarchies. In addition, I am more shocked that those problems are normalized in America because it is just an advertisement.

    Starting with the sexism in advertisements, women are sexualized and objectified in so many ways. Commonly, the advertisements showed that women are shown as housewives or sex objects for men. Women are even shown as the victim of violence in advertisements and this problems and crimes are normalized and even made into jokes because they are just ‘advertisements’. In Kilbourne’s reading, she gives a few examples from Harper’s book of how women are objectified. First, the women’s bodies are dismemberment, meaning that their bodies are shown in separated parts, such as legs, breasts, and so on. This dismemberment concept shows that the woman's body is not connected to her mind and emotions, leading to the objectification of women. Next, they are portrayed as clowns. In advertisements, men are usually shown as the secure, powerful, and serious character but women are pictured as playful clowns that she is not serious of anything. Lastly, they show dominance and violence of men to women. This theme of tragic abuse is commonly shown in advertisements.

dismemberment

    The problems of sexism are also shown by the looks of men and women in advertisements. Previously, we discussed that women are judged by their looks and men are judged by their actions. The advertisements also prove that statement. In the previous versions of advertisements, women were photoshopped as stick skinny figures, and would always have perfect skin with no blemishes and no pores. Currently, women are still photoshopped to have perfect skin and perfect body for example as Kim Kardashian. These artificial image of women in advertisements are a huge problem because it affects the viewer to feel guilty about themselves. These advertisements are basically telling the viewers that they need to have a perfect body and skin, and if not, then they are not perfect and they feel ashamed of themselves. The real problem here is that women are starving themselves to have the skinny body and spend a lot of money for the perfect skins. Surprisingly, young teenagers in middle school or even elementary school are having the same problems because of what they see in media.

    Next, there is much racism shown in advertisements. First, in advertisements, they show that lighter skins are better than darker skins. In Asian countries, products that make your skin lighter are very popular and advertised everywhere. One example of racism in the advertisement is the Dove advertisement that went viral after it went on. It was the body wash advertisement that a black woman turned into a white woman when she used the Dove product. Personally, I was really surprised by that. Another example of racism in the advertisement is that there are many jokes that lead to racism problems. For example, the phrase of one advertisement said, “always bet on black”, with the black man playing sports. Another example is the H and M advertisements with a black child modeling for the hoodie that said, “Coolest Monkey in the Jungle.”

Racist Dove Advertistment

 

The purpose of those advertisements is described in Kilbourne’s reading. She said, “…The ads sell a great deal more than products. They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth, love and sexuality, popularity and normalcy. They tell us who we are and who we should be”. As she had described, the advertisements are affecting our lives more than we think. From the advertisements, the unintended effect that might happen is that women shaming herself because she does not look like the model in the advertisement. Women are unintentionally objectifying herself as the mask, and that separates her real self because of the media. The popular culture created because the advertisements are usually, eating disorders, objectifying herself and learned that women should learn to stop affecting herself from the ideal advertisements and be herself.

In addition, my favorite media is Facebook, Instagram, web-toon (Korean online comic book), Youtube, and Newspaper app. The ownership structure is shown in a variety of ways in those media. For example, on Instagram, there are many business accounts that are not personal but only for business. These business Instagram accounts show the viewers their daily life and make the viewer want to get the products that they use in their daily life. On Youtube, they show advertisements before the video, but also many companies give sponsors to Youtubers and they advertise the products so that their followers want to buy the products because of them. These ownership and advertisements affect the content to turning them into like advertisements and viewers feel that they need to be like them or they need to get the product in order to be like them. I believe that this cannot change because the world of advertising has grown a lot and is still keep growing.

Haelee Lee