The advertising world has been playing the same horrible racial and sexist joke for decades. Advertisement is to communicate an idea related to the product. The advertisement needs to communicate an idea to a particular public. Therefore, this creates a division that classifies members of society by a type of users. The distinction is by gender and race. There are special products, clothing and make-up for a white woman and there are special ones for a black woman. This distinction places barriers in the communication between a white woman and a black woman as users. In other words, the products become an obstacle that extends in the middle of their communication. In order to solve any racial differences among people, especially women, who have already been discriminated by their gender, those types of advertisement should not exist.
In “Killing us Softly” by Jean Kilbourne, she raises a question about how far advertising goes to sell a product. In order to make money, they destroy women’s self-esteem and offer a product that reconstruct them. Kilbourne finds out that what links advertisements together is not the tactics of selling, such as the way to reach people or the media that is being presented, but what links them together is the animalization of women, sexism, racism and humiliation.
Cesar, a company that creates food for pets, has an advertisement that shows two side-by-side pictures of a pretty girl next to a nice Spanish cocker. The two images are blended together at equal in sizes, color tone and composition. From the artistic perspective, the image is well-balanced. From the use of this image system, this creates a quality of a woman and a dog, and they are not distinct from each other. They both are irrational and dependent of instant gratification. “Delight your little dog” at the bottom of the image under the dog’s side distracts our attention to see critically into the woman’s perspective. This phrase can be seen from two points of views. The first one is direct; the “dog” is the woman and the “food” is the sexual reward. The second one is indirect; to a male audience, the advertisement is telling them to give themselves the pleasure of delighting themselves with a woman, who is below in certain levels.
In a youtube video called “The Photoshop Effect,” it brings the awareness of how photographs in a magazine have been retouched in an extreme way to create the perfect figure. The explanation from people in the advertising market in the video express their concern about how any cover magazine can create an astonished reaction in young females when they see a picture of a perfect body. Their opinion should be a sign that alert readers about the excessive use of photoshop. As the smoking industry demands a cigarette brand to print a health warning on the box, magazines should have the same regulation to protect the mental health of young women. The bottom of the photograph should a contain a message saying that the image was distorted and photoshopped to attain a desired effect.
However, we should not only blame advertisers for dehumanizing women. Advertisers draw their ideas from a society’s culture. If society marginalizes women, advertisers will do the same. According to Sut Jhally, “Advertising...does not work by creating values and attitudes of nothing but by drawing upon and rechanneling concerns that the target audience (and the culture) already shares” (79-80). He also argues, “Advertising is not simple manipulation, but what ad-maker Tony Schwartz calls ‘participation,’ with the audience participating in its own manipulation” (80).
The Colombian artist Fernando Botero used rounded images of women in his works and saw beauty in this form. If society follows his idea of female beauty, advertisers will also trail along, creating advertisements where the rounded woman, not the size zero woman, is beautiful. Therefore, in order for us to rid the distorted advertisements of women today, we need to readjust our values and standards as a society.
Works Cited
Jhally, Sut. “Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture.” Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text Reader 1 (1995); 77-87.
In “Killing us Softly” by Jean Kilbourne, she raises a question about how far advertising goes to sell a product. In order to make money, they destroy women’s self-esteem and offer a product that reconstruct them. Kilbourne finds out that what links advertisements together is not the tactics of selling, such as the way to reach people or the media that is being presented, but what links them together is the animalization of women, sexism, racism and humiliation.
Cesar, a company that creates food for pets, has an advertisement that shows two side-by-side pictures of a pretty girl next to a nice Spanish cocker. The two images are blended together at equal in sizes, color tone and composition. From the artistic perspective, the image is well-balanced. From the use of this image system, this creates a quality of a woman and a dog, and they are not distinct from each other. They both are irrational and dependent of instant gratification. “Delight your little dog” at the bottom of the image under the dog’s side distracts our attention to see critically into the woman’s perspective. This phrase can be seen from two points of views. The first one is direct; the “dog” is the woman and the “food” is the sexual reward. The second one is indirect; to a male audience, the advertisement is telling them to give themselves the pleasure of delighting themselves with a woman, who is below in certain levels.
In a youtube video called “The Photoshop Effect,” it brings the awareness of how photographs in a magazine have been retouched in an extreme way to create the perfect figure. The explanation from people in the advertising market in the video express their concern about how any cover magazine can create an astonished reaction in young females when they see a picture of a perfect body. Their opinion should be a sign that alert readers about the excessive use of photoshop. As the smoking industry demands a cigarette brand to print a health warning on the box, magazines should have the same regulation to protect the mental health of young women. The bottom of the photograph should a contain a message saying that the image was distorted and photoshopped to attain a desired effect.
However, we should not only blame advertisers for dehumanizing women. Advertisers draw their ideas from a society’s culture. If society marginalizes women, advertisers will do the same. According to Sut Jhally, “Advertising...does not work by creating values and attitudes of nothing but by drawing upon and rechanneling concerns that the target audience (and the culture) already shares” (79-80). He also argues, “Advertising is not simple manipulation, but what ad-maker Tony Schwartz calls ‘participation,’ with the audience participating in its own manipulation” (80).
The Colombian artist Fernando Botero used rounded images of women in his works and saw beauty in this form. If society follows his idea of female beauty, advertisers will also trail along, creating advertisements where the rounded woman, not the size zero woman, is beautiful. Therefore, in order for us to rid the distorted advertisements of women today, we need to readjust our values and standards as a society.
Works Cited
Jhally, Sut. “Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture.” Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text Reader 1 (1995); 77-87.
Photos Credits
http://www.soho.com.co Revista Solo Hombres (SOHO)
http://www.boterosa.org Colombian Art Foundation
ildeltadellaluna.net Botero's bailarina
iftyisthenew.com
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Video Credits
The photoshop effects www. healthdiet.com ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP31r70_QNM
Videos powered by Youtube.com
With the use of PhotoShop advertisers have been able to recreate the female body, into absolute perfection and making it more aesthetically pleasing. Thus, many people have developed an unrealistic concept of beauty and perfection that is utterly unattainable in reality.
ReplyDeleteThe YouTube clip on the magic of retouching in PhotoShop is a wake-up call for many of us. There is not one image in many magazines that hasn’t been retouched. If we continue to be fooled by the images of perfection that we see in the media, we will never truly be happy with ourselves because seeking the perfection by the standards of PhotoShop and what we see in the media is truly detrimental to our well-being. By including a warning label that warns us about retouched images lowering our self-esteems is a good start to help us all acknowledge the truth.