How Government and Media work together to control and exploit women: Follow The Ideology, and of course The Money

     The goal of advertisers is to sell their products by any means necessary. Often advertisers will align themselves with political goals to help exploit a consumer base. In The Beauty Myth Naomi Wolf writes that in 1944 employed women did not want to go back to unpaid housework after the war. The government was worried that male soldiers would not be able to find good paying jobs because lower paid women were currently dominating the  workforce. After millions of women quit or were fired, women’s magazines sought to define the domesticity that women were forced back into. These magazines became, “…one of the most powerful agents for changing women’s roles…, they have consistently glamorized whatever the economy, their advertisers, and, during wartime, the government, needed at that moment from women.” Wolf writes, “By the 1950s, the traditional women’s magazine’s role was reestablished.” She quotes Ann Oakley in Housewife, “In psychological terms, they enabled the harassed mother, the overburdened housewife, to make contact with her ideal self: that self which aspires to be a good wife, a good mother, and an efficient homemaker… Women’s expected role in society [was] to strive after perfection in all three roles.” Wolf ends this argument by saying, “The definition of perfection, however, changes with the needs of employers, politicians, and, in the postwar economy that depended on spiraling consumption, advertisers.” (p.64) Today, almost all of the tabloid magazines (People magazine is an exception) are owned by American Media Inc. AMI is owned by David Pecker, a friend and ally of the president, Donald Trump. His influence over the content in his magazines was reported by Sarah Ellison, Beth Reinhard and Carol D. Leoning in The Washington Post (August 22, 2018), “According to the documents, Pecker assured Cohen [Trump’s lawyer] that he would help deal with rumors related to Trump’s relationships with women by essentially turning his tabloid operation into a research arm of the Trump campaign, identifying potentially damaging stories and, when necessary, buying the silence of the women who wanted to tell them.” 

How does the ownership of media affect the advertisements? In the tabloids owned by AMI and consumed mostly by women, the content and advertisements are often indistinguishable. Certainly, the advertisers in women’s magazines demand content that mirrors their ads. In “Sex, Lies & Advertising,” Gloria Steinem talks about advertisers demanding a, “‘supportive editorial atmosphere’ or ‘complementary copy.’” Most of the content and the ads in the tabloids is about white, heterosexual female celebrities and how they dress, what make up they wear and what personal family drama they are engaged in. Here and in other magazines some content appears as “editor’s picks of the best things to purchase.” These mostly include clothing and accessories that look like what the models and celebs are sporting. The content copy of the tabloids pits one woman against another in “who wore it best” scenarios or shame women as in “fashion police” pictures of celebrities and why they look horrendous in what they have chosen to wear. The over arching message is the same as it was back in the 40s and 50s: Women should concern themselves with how they look and what they can buy. This trope fits in with conservative Republican views that seem to want women to mostly be seen and only heard defending or praising men. Unfortunately these views of women are not exclusive to Republican conservatives. 

As John Berger states in Ways of Seeing, “Men survey women before treating them. Consequently how a woman appears to a man can determine how she will be treated. To acquire some control over this process, women must contain it and interiorize it.” (pg. 46) Women have “interiorized “ the importance of her appearance and with the help of company products are now selling themselves as advertisements. This is most strikingly seen today in the form of the “influencer.” On https://sproutsocial.com/insights/influencer-marketing/ there are tips for how to become an influencer and how to advertise. A familiar maxim pops up, “In 2018, your influencer marketing campaigns should look a lot less like generic ads and much more like content marketing.” Instead of celebrities but sometimes them as well, women can be paid by companies to wear and talk up their products. But who is benefiting the most? The influencer is sometimes only paid in products, the company is receiving cheap ads and a target audience. Most of the influencer market is on Instagram. Instagram is owned by Facebook, Inc. and according to investopedia.com has $458 billion market cap as of April 2018. Facebook and Instagram sell users data (every click is analyzed and sold) to make this fortune. In an article in The Atlantic www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/what-facebook-did/542502/ Alexis C. Madrigal writes, “…Facebook became completely dominant as a media distributor… Facebook took over the news-media ecosystem. …Facebook decided it needed to own ‘news’” We all know what happened in the 2016 election and how Facebook was used by Russian political operatives to disrupt the election. It is probable that this was known and promoted by the people who helped Trump get elected.

Advertising as a tool of capitalist society and government manipulation is dangerous. Along with the sick, superficial, impossible images of women’s bodies, the damage to women’s self esteem and identity, there is the agenda of oppressing women to keep men in power with access to jobs and money. Advertising is the propaganda that women buy into literally and is a distraction from what women are capable of. What if all the advertisements were of women in action, fighting for equal pay, running for political office, helping each other in diverse communities, bettering themselves through literature and the arts instead through creams and gels. Who would pay for that? Would you?