Worse Than I Thought

[kerravonsen]

I already loathe advertising - not just consider it an irritating interruption, but consider it a social ill. Why? Because its purpose is to make us unhappy and discontent.

Then I saw this: Representations of Gender in Advertising. Pervasive misogyny. Objectification of women. Violence against women. It isn't just the media content we should be objecting to - it seems that the non-content is even more loathesome and disgusting than that. I hadn't been aware of this before, because I don't read fashion magazines, indeed, I hardly even watch TV, so I've been avoiding ads anyway. But this... (shakes head).

(edited to fix link)

Comments

[tptigger]

Link goes to a locked post. :(

[kerravonsen]

Okay, I've changed the link to go directly to the video-study.

[watervole]

Some of those are very old images.

I don't read fashion magazines except when there is nothing else at the dentist's to read. They're bad, but not generally as bad as this video depicts.

[lizbee]

I tend to exist in an advertising-free bubble as well, but I'm a big fan of Mad Men, which is set in an advertising company in the '60s.

Last season there was a plotline about the agency's increasingly desperate and amoral attempts to get the Jaguar account, which culminate in the office manager being pressured to prostitute herself to a Jaguar dealer in exchange for his support. The advertisement that arises out of this incident compares women and cars, with the tagline, "At last, something beautiful you can own."

Pretty misogynistic, right? But it's fiction, and it's set in the '60s.

The other day I was walking through Melbourne Central, and there was an ad for a car with an almost identical tagline.

[izhilzha.livejournal.com]

Ugh, indeed.

I found this very interesting, as I've been (when I have time, given the fire and other RL stuff) taking an online class called Gender Through Comics. The "role reversed" ads at the end strongly reminded me of one of the graphic novels we read for the class--Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore. Thanks for the link; more food for thought.

[imhilien.livejournal.com]

It's creepy how many of those ads treat violence towards women as ok... sexy, even. :((

[kerravonsen]

I'm wondering if there's a feedback cycle here: the advertising people want to get people's attention, to shock; but the more violent images the ad people see, the more desensitized and jaded they become, so they produce even more violent images in order to be "attention-grabbing". I mean, the people who are most exposed to these images have to be the people who produce them, yes? The rest follows logically.

[imhilien.livejournal.com]

That sounds very plausible. :(

[lonemagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've posted about that kind of thing before (such as here: http://lonemagpie.livejournal.com/746146.html) - thinking of the paragraph that goes "That patriachal shit is bad for us guys too. It's less obvious. but we're getting programmed to see women that way. it's not something that we're naturally born with - there are people doing it, usually to make money out of us, as well to keep half the damn species down. (oh, and that part doesn't just apply to women, but minorities too."

(Re: minorities, seriously, were there any non-whites of either gender in that video?)

The weird thing is - aside from there often being no connection between the thing being advertised and the image (I want to know, for example, how comfy and durable a shoe is, not how it looks on any naked women that happen to be draped around the shop... But then, I'm not normal, apparently) - that several of the genderswapped ones actually work better for ads intended for women's magazines (and here I'm thinking, for example, of the one with the three women in shades - surely that'd be a more sensible ad for shades or leather jackets in a fashion mag?), rather than looking daft.

And also that the "even a man can open it" one is pretty representative of fad that went through UK TV advertising a few years ago, (since apparently advertisers can only grasp the idea of equality in terms of "let's demean the other side for a change, two wrongs make a right, right?")

Thankfully I don't really see these types of print ads much, because I don't read those sorts of magazines (Radio Times and Fortean Times are about it for me), which saves my blood pressure...

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

I've never read womens magazines the articles are bad enough, never mind the advertising.

Mind you TV advertising is just as bad, especially the perfume ads.

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

Though if those are from fashion magazines, it means men read them as well to get the "message" that such objectification is "OK". Men read fashion mags?