Though dated around 1999, this video is a fantastic piece about the depiction of women in the media and I highly recommend anyone with even a faint iota of interest to give it a look.
Now again it is a bit of a dated piece, but still provides quite a bit of insight into advertising's view of women and potentially what they should apparently strive to be. Are things different today? Yes and no. The very first piece of advertising about birth control pills likely wouldn't last two seconds in today's market (unless it was in jest, but never seriously). The idea of women being fixated on household choirs is unquestionably offensive, but as the talk illustrates there are much more subtle ways to depict this passivity (being silent, vulnerable, etc.) Of course the speaker is being a tad bit selective about her ads to prove her thesis (elevators are dangerous?), but, overplayed or not, the message is still there. Objectivity and the unobtainable image of the "perfect woman" are quite clear.
Now if you were to ask me the question of if things are worse today for women I would have to say yes. With the internet being much more integrated into our daily lives the potential to see these images increases exponentially. There are companies trying to move away from these images purposefully, like Nike's ads specifically aimed towards positively depicting women and their body's, and it's a fantastic step in the right direction.
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| "My shoulders aren't dainty or proportional to my hips. Some say they are like a man's. I say, leave men out of it. They are mine. I made them in a swimming pool then I went to yoga and made my arms." |
The only problem is that it's the equivalent of throwing a pebble in the ocean when you think about it. It's a good disturbance, but it will hold little sway over the giant wave of ads constantly washing over women. The biggest issue I think though is that these awful messages are getting to girls at a younger and younger age. My friends and I were recently talking about how a great number of modern children's cartoons have become so sterile you can actually feel yourself losing brain cells with censorship (although tailored more to avoiding violence), but the internet is fair game.
However, a friend of mine pointed out how the show Dora the Explorer, a show featuring one of very few non-adult characters like Barbie, is being sexualized in a spin-off show. Why? This all seems so contradictory. It's scary that there are products aimed for toning the body's of little girls at the age of seven (shoes by Sketchers) and scarier still that padded bras are advertised for such a young age demographic before they've even started developing. What kind of message is this sending? Girls this young should not be thinking of themselves as sexual beings and it's terrible how they're constantly given figures that instill the belief that physical beauty is everything.
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| I'm looking at you Disney. |
Sadly there is no quick fix for this kind of problem. I mean you can't exactly keep these girls in a bubble for their entire lives. Big change needs to happen in the world. I feel like the best thing you can do is keep an eye on your child and instill in them at a young age the ideal that physical beauty is not all that they are. They can be smart, imaginative, passionate, caring, devoted, independent, all of these things and more. Is it a guarantee? Unfortunately it's not that easy. All we can really do is give them the right tools in life and hope they make the right choices when they begin to venture out of the nest.
Never stop questioning.
Sources:
http://adland.tv/ooh/nike-gets-real-ads-women
http://www.care2.com/greenliving/skechers-markets-butt-toning-shoe-to-7-year-old-girls.html?page=2
http://voicerev-sharemyjourney.blogspot.com/2011/03/padded-bras-for-little-children-what-on.html
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2009/03/dora.html
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