The Way Medias And Advertisers Influence Gender Norms
Introduction
In 1952, Lovable, a lingerie brand said, “A person who is very flat-chested is very hard to be a ten”. We are in 2018, years have passed, and a lot of things have changed. Women can be independent, go to the university, work, decide about their own bodies. However, the image of women in advertisements does not seem to have changed over the years. In 2014, Victoria Secret introduced a new campaign entitled “the perfect body”, showing an image of teeny, tiny, toned, lingerie-clad models. For a long time, advertisers have used the woman’s body to sell more, focusing on their strengths, their bodies and their femininity. Even if the standards of beauty concerning woman’s body have changed somewhat over the years, in practice, it’s still the same today. What has change, is the answer of the society in that kind of situation. In the Victoria secret case, nearly 5,000 people have signed a petition demanding an apology and an alteration of the advertisement.
The slogan of the campaign has been changed. But despite this kind of cases, brands continue to use a degrading image of the woman in advertisements. In this assignment, we are going to talk more specifically about a movie that reflects this societal issue: Miss representation. Released in 2011, this movie/documentary analyses how medias and advertisers cultivate the idea that girl’s and women’s value lies in their youth, beauty and sexuality, not in their capacities (Representation project website) We will talk about how promotion plays a role in contributing to this social problem. We will focus here on the influence of medias and advertisers on gender norms, the use of inappropriate or offensive content and finally on the impacts on vulnerable populations. We have many influences on how we see men and women, but media is certainly one of the most powerful and persuasive one. They are multiple and surround us in our everyday lives.
Unfortunately, the image of women is too often reduced to a shopaholic, obsessed by her physical appearance and by her power of seduction. Hence, medias perpetuate unrealistic and stereotypical perceptions about women. There is also an objectification of women who are treated as objects simply to be looked at, coveted or touched. However, it becomes a social issue when women start to think that to be loved and desired, you have to be a pretty thin young woman. It formats the woman’s body and millions of women are forced to duplicate inaccessible “beauty standards”. Advertisements repeat again and again that the body is something imperfect that has to be maintained. And this image of woman through advertisements impacts their evolution in the society. The consequence of all this is that women don’t love their bodies and respond to advertiser’s messages of never being good enough by consuming always more and spending more money on the pursuit of beauty than on their education. Advertisers are the source of this social issue and they support it.
As the movie says, they engaged more than 236 billion each year in these contents: “this is the first time in human history that marketers have dictated our cultural norms and values. ” (Caroline Heldman, Miss Representation) It is certainly very efficient for the concerned brands, in a society based on appearance, but it is ethical to demean women just for gaining consumer’s attention and selling more? When we talk about advertising and influence, we naturally think about women. But as mentioned in the movie, the impact on men is equally important. Advertising narrows the definition of what it means to be a man: be aggressive, dominant and powerful. Thus, men may 3 be under as such pressure as women to achieve cultural ideas or physical appearance dictated by advertisements.
Finally, I also wanted to talk about the impact on relationships between men and women. Most of these advertisements lead us to believe that no matter what they’re doing, women are always in a research of masculine recognition. She always wears perfume, clothes and jewelry to attract men while men wear watches and perfume to be free and to conquer the world. The impact on the relationship between men and women is huge: women are seen as dependent on independent men. The issue is that the common presence in our culture makes it normal and people replicate the same behavior in our everyday lives, without necessarily realizing it. A way to mitigate or eliminate this issue would be to show another image of the woman in advertisements: a powerful and independent woman in a position of leadership. Because as pointed out in the documentary, “you can’t be what you can’t see”, and this kind of advertisements would permit to change the image of woman in the society and so its impact. In any case, some brands have already started the transition and I think they’re right. The society is changing, and brands which have understood it (body positivism, self-acceptance…) strengthen their corporate image and have a head-start.
In january 2018, twenty-eight big companies (Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, BNP Paribas etc…) have undertaken to eliminate gender stereotypes in their advertisements. But goals of companies are to sell products, make themselves known and fix impression and memories in people’s minds. Hence, if using the image of woman permits to sell and to fix memories in people’s minds, why would they like to stop it? Advertising is firstly an essential force in market economy. It provides information and help to keep prices low and to facilitate the entry of new products into the market. In addition, consumers are also responsible, and I feel responsible for these sexist advertising. Because I’m buying these products, because I’m 4 watching every year the Victoria Secret Fashion Show or also because I have no reaction concerning these ads that surround me every day. To sum up, I think that the impact of medias and marketers on gender norms is huge even if the point of view of marketers are understandable and even if some companies are making efforts. We are in 2018, and the improvement concerning woman’s and man’s image in advertisement is not obvious. Medias are a mirror of the society but here, the image that we can see is belittling and stereotypical.
Inappropriate and offensive content
Nudity, use of sexual appeals, violence and aggressivity have often been used by marketers in advertising. These words are often considered as “uncomfortable” by the society and that’s why they are major areas of ethical concerns in advertising. “Because in a world of million channels, people try to do more shocking and they know how to get attention” (Jim Stayer, Miss Representation). But could it be justified for an advertisement to be offensive? Offence could be elicited through disgusting images, sexual references, obscenity, vulgarity or also moral offensiveness. The question of nudity and the use of sexual appeals (nudes, suggestions etc…) are certainly the most contested issues in terms of ethics and morality. 20% of the advertisements used sexual appeal, it is common place and its efficiency has already been proven. But, the perception of what is acceptable or not is personal.
It can be influenced by our past, our history, our sociocultural environment, our education or our relationship with sex and modesty. Hence, ethical judgement is complex and deal with cultural norms. But it doesn’t change the fact that this representation of woman in ads and medias has an impact on men’s vision. This impact could be violence and aggressivity against women. Because turning a human being into a thing as we saw in the first part, is a way to justify violence (Jean Kilbourne, 2010). With 5 the communication that it is okay to dominate and to touch a woman, violence enhances violence in real life. These sexist images are constantly on display and it become normalized. Malamuth and Briere (1986) presented a model, showing effects medias could have in violence against women. Cultural factors, including the mass media, and individual variables can led to antisocial behavior, including aggression. To mitigate or eliminate this issue, we have to make a distinction between intentional offense and unintentionally offense. Brenkert makes that distinction in Marketing and Ethics. In one way, the advertiser didn’t expect people to be offended, it could be a mistake or a misunderstanding (the ad wanted to be funny for example). In that alternative, advertisers have to determine what will be offensive, what will be harmful for consumers. In order to ensure this, advertisers must be aware of the changes in the society and what is morally acceptable or not today.
On the other way, advertisers wanted deliberately to offense society (or a part). The goal was to provoke but it also follows the cliché that “sex sells”. “They calculate that the positive effect of the ads on those they have targeted will outweigh any negative effect (offense) on those they didn’t target” (Brenkert, 2008). But I think that, one time again, it is possible to create an advertisement that will draw public attention without necessarily using violence and sex. Otherwise, advertisers must be morally intelligent enough to create an ad where sexual appeals will not harm people.
For example, nudity is more and more used in advertising of the health market, but it is viewed as something healthy, pure and natural. However, Severn and Blech (1990) explained in their article The Effects of sexual and non-sexual advertising appeals and information level on cognitive processing and communication effectiveness (p. 14), that the use of overt sexual appeals is less effective than the use of non-sexual appeals in advertisements. Advertisers can also justify the use of sex appeals as an art form, to celebrate the woman’s body. It is not always with the aim of being offensive. To conclude on the interests of companies, Michael Eisner, former CEO of the Walt Disney Co. expresses in the movie that 6 “We have no obligation to make history, we have no obligation to make art, we have no obligation to make a statement, to make money is our only objective”. Thus, the balance between making profit and trying to be fair and ethic is hard to find.
