Sexual objectification of women in contemporary media advertising

Culture and Media Works

Sexual Objectification of Women in Media

Media today is one of the most common grounds used to communicate or get a message across. It has readily increased its accessibility and its reach to people with phenomenon of globalization. Any individual who has access to any form of visual media today knows how the issue of "sex" has become a common term in the media. It is used in different ways and on different levels in different countries but it is reasonable to state that the sexual objectification is being used in media today and is presented in such an open manner that it can simply not be disregarded anymore (Hall, 1998).

Be it television, billboards, movies, TV shows, magazines or any other visual media form, sex is now a prominent element that we come across at places where it might be least expected. The recent researchers have now started laying emphasis on this factor and they have become increasingly curious as to why sex cannot be eliminated from media and why the sex issues need to be so highlighted. One of these issues that is becoming increasingly common and is quite eye catching is that of the sexual portrayal of women in media and how the female body is objectified and commoditized in media.

The biological figure of the woman is being used everywhere and for all kinds of purposes whether it fits in or not. The media today emphasizes the external beauty and the need to appear physically good. This materialization and beautification has led to serious sociological implications and is creating many complications in the society. Hence, the question arises why it is necessary to present women as sexual commodities or pieces of attraction in order to sell something or catch the eye of the audience? This report will basically focus on how women are being used by different companies in order to increase the sales of their products and create awareness about the brand they sell. We shall look into the portrayal of women in advertising mostly and how the female body is being used in unnecessary places and in ways which are largely inappropriate (Thornham, 2007).

It is important to know and recognize just how this media portrayal impacts the minds of the young children watching television as well as the way women are being undermined in society and this objectification helps to reinforce the level of patriarchy in the society. Some concepts were previously classified as taboo but they are slowly losing that term and are being brought into the mainstream. Researchers suggest that some of the social problems that exist today are due to the bold attitude that the media has undertaken and the frustration that it has started to create among the masses. This leads too much of the problems that see the root cause as the media. The media holds the power to incorporate positive as well as negative images due to the immense power that it holds. But it is quite saddening to see how the power is being misused to send out negative themes.

There is much supervision needed by the parents due to the sexually explicit and inappropriate content shown on the media. The following section presents scholarly arguments and some theories that deal with the reasons and the ways in which women are sexually objectified in the media and the implications that this has on the society and how it gives rise to numerous problems. It will also deal with why this is such an important issue to know about and deal with in order to put an end to women commoditization (Galician, 2004).

Literature Review

As discussed above, the recent trend in the sexual objectification of women and the portrayal of the female body in the media is becoming quite a disturbing issue. The main modes of media that are being a part of this is firstly advertising, in the form of TV Commercials, billboards, magazine and print ads. This has found to be the most common use and link to this portrayal of the women. However, there are some theories and researchers have been laying quite a lot of emphasis into probing why this is happening and what the societal implications of this are.

The first theory that can be taken under consideration is the sexual objectification theory by Frederickson & Roberts, 1997 which present what this statement actually means. According to this theory, women are subjects of sexual objectification and they are mainly seen as commodities and objects to be sold and attracted by their beauty. In the field of media, the women herself is treated as a separate entity from her body and it is usually her body parts that are the focus and in the lime light which appeals to the men and is presented as a mere fulfillment of the desire that men have (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997).

This above outlined theory has some serious implications as the sad effects are concerned and how the world now revolves around the external beauty and the need to look good. This has given rise to many of the psychological, social and health related issues that are common to find among women these days. Today, we come across the eating disorders and the diets the young females subject to because they are constantly conscious and aware of their looks and their appearance. This concept of beautification is becoming so common and so out there that is quite difficult to disregard its presence. In fact, the younger generation is now instilling these values and adopting these concepts to levels that are harmful.

The main motive of argument here in Fredrickson and Roberts' theory is that instead of recognizing the implications and what this objectification is doing to women, they end up placing more and more emphasis on their outer appearances and become a part of this race to be conscious of their looks. This results in a form of self-objectification. This has negative impacts on the psychological development of the women because they are constantly thinking about what they are supposed to eat, what kind of clothes they need to wear to look slim, they have increasingly become weight conscious, skin conscious and they have called on this constant state of worry upon themselves. This has also given rise to a lot of health problems and diseases due to the lack of proper diet that the women intake (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997).

Fredrickson and Roberts also states that due to this emphasis on physical beauty, women are always anxious about their look and how they are being judged from the eyes of another woman and how it might be an act of shame to not be in their best looks. This attraction that they have to offer through the constant care and flashing of their body has given rise to a form of frustration in society on part of men as well because of the way women themselves present their bodies and create a threat of rape upon them. Moradi and Huang, 2008 have conducted their research upon the implications and negative aspects that are attached with this self objectification that women have become a part of and the fact of the matter that the internal beauty and the personality has gone somewhere at the back end where no one seems to care about it.

As the concept of women commoditization has become a bit known, researchers have now started directing their concerns towards the power of media and how the advertising has played its part in creating this huge issue in our society. Extensive researches have been conducted on the negative aspects of women objectification and it turns out that the common ground problems that exist can be pointed out as depression, shame of the body, eating disorders, constant awareness of body shame and looks, diseases and health problems, sexual dysfunctional problems. These are just a couple of the most common problems outlined but the list does not exactly stop here. Kilbourne, 2002 has taken up the research process of getting to the bottom of the role of media in this development of conscious attitudes and the prevalence of the women portrayal. This has led to serious dismemberment of the women population in our society and the main link that can be traced back to this objectification (Kilbourne, 2002).

Kilbourne's main role to play here was to analyze the strength of the media and the advertising industry and then to assess the power that this form of media plays to create this problem in our society. It is quite noticeable that we come across thousands of advertisements every day of our lives and in various different forms. This multibillion dollar industry called the advertising industry possesses the power beyond the comprehension of our words. It has the power to control what we say, what we do, how we act, how we appear, who we meet and in other words it knows how to shape our lives without us knowing how it has been done. Similarly, women today feel the need to appear beautiful and perfect all the time in order to be a part of a class in society. According to what Kilbourne suggests, women use their bodies as masks or objects that need to be taken care of all the time and kept in perfect shape and condition. The media and the advertisements program their minds to think that their appearance is not perfect and they need to change themselves in a particular manner (Kilbourne, 2002).

One of the main roles that media has played in this subject is to make an individual perceive themselves from the eyes of others and to take it as a responsibility to be appealing to the eyes of the audience instead of what they themselves want to do. Advertisements today sell the bodies of women, not in the literal sense but metaphorically speaking, all advertisements have women in them in one way or the other which they present in a way to attract the buyer to test the product. Many times we will notice that the women have nothing to do with the product being sold but the perception of the people is that in order to make the product successful, they have to include women in some way or the other.

The recent diversion of attention towards this objectification of women has started to perceive the implications of the dismemberment of the women in society. What we mean by this term is the fact that such advertisements focus their attention on just one part of the women's body while the importance of the woman, her opinions, and her personality as a whole is largely neglected. What we need to recognize here is the fact that by this internalization, we are indeed letting this exploitation and objectification of women increase and this undermines the women and her importance in society. The subjects in question are themselves making the unacceptable acceptable and are choosing to stay quite about it.

In order to assess the implications of this sexual objectification and the effects of the women portrayal via the media, Kuring and Tiggemann (2004) went on to conduct their research by carrying out a study at a university in South Australia where they handed out questionnaires regarding the feelings about the way self objectification was affecting the women in question and how this was affecting their lives. It turned out that there were heavy consequences of this phenomenon and the self surveillance cost the women a lot that they simply were not realizing. The most common implications were the ones which were outlined above as well like depression, self-consciousness, shame and disorders as well as dysfunctions (Tiggemann & Kuring, 2004).

Another similar study was carried out by Noll, Fredrickson and Roberts in 1998 at the University of Duke where they conducted laboratory sessions to assess the same implications and they ranked the attributes of the body in order of the importance attached to it by the respondents. They found that the most prominent one was shame in not having the appropriate look and not being able to maintain that beauty that the society demanded. This particular study saw the way motivation and behavior of people was changing in relation to these societal demands and they reached the conclusion which stated that the culture was seriously impacting the women in negative ways. Their study also went further on to evaluate the link between the roles that media was playing in programming this behavior and how this resulted in the abnormalities in society and women attitudes (Roberts, Noel, Fredrickson, 1998).

As mentioned earlier as well, although objectification is being given some awareness in society, there is yet to be lighter shed on the dismemberment of the women's body where every single part of the women's body is being treated as a separate entity to sell and advertise. In the next section, we will discuss some of the advertisements whereby this has taken place and how t exploits the woman's sexuality and the body. The concept of dismemberment basically deals with the idea of putting all the parts of the women as separate parts that can be used in different ways to attract the audience and the target market. It instills the concept in women which states that even if one part of the women's body is not up to the level of satisfaction, the whole idea of the body's beauty is ruined. This is particularly why young girls are attracted and pushed into these ideas from a very small level so that they can keep working on their body in order to bring them up to the level of perfection as they grow up. They present the idea of the body as a work in progress which continuously has to be taken care of so that it can become what the society and its members demand it to be.

The researches and surveys suggest that sometimes women go to the extent of comparing themselves and being depressed for the fact that they are no match for the women advertised and marketed. In advertisements women are presented as having the perfect bodies and being sexually erotic to those men who see them. This undermines the concept of a regular woman and makes her feel bad about her own body and the place that she stands in. What they fail to recognize is that what they see is not necessarily real and has been worked upon and is sometimes just mere Photoshop which makes those women look in a particular way. More importantly, it is not all that important to be so concerned about these petty, senseless issues. Hence, the idea of self objectification is the root cause that needs to be dealt with and the way media is giving a rise to more and more of this factor in society.

Apart from these researches and studies, there are a number of other scholarly arguments presented regarding this topic and the seriousness of this particular subject. One of these arguments was regarding the cultural differences in the concept of beauty among states like the United States, Singapore, Taiwan and other such countries. This was conducted by Katherine, Hong Cheng and Ping Shaw in 2005 and focused on the differences in the portrayal of women in all three societies in order to asses which one of them-based most importance on this external beauty. They hence derived that the United States ranked first in giving a heads up to this objectification closely followed by the other two but Singapore and Taiwan were mainly focused on the need for the female to have a pretty face rather than any other parts. The American states were more focused on the clothes and objectification by portraying the woman will minimal amount of clothes while Singapore based their objectification on the use of cosmetics mainly.

Donna Sweeney and Stephen H. Wagner wrote about the depiction of women as mere sex objects in the advertising industry and the ways in which that impacted the satisfaction women gained from their bodies. In this research, they talked about how the perceptions of the two genders have seen changes after the depiction in media and the way they are portrayed in sexist as well as non-sexist advertisements. They studied in the mental as well as the physical implications that media has had on the behavior and appearance of the genders.

Katherine Covell conducted her study along with Natalie J. about the impacts of women advertising and the link between the portrayal and the effects that this has such as aggression, depression and undermining of the gender. They also talked about how this contributes towards the acceptance of male domination in society and giving in to the need to please the men and sexually arouse them by the notion of the women's body.

The study conducted by Zimmerman, John Dahlberg and Amanda tested the objectification of women in media across various cultures and how young females felt about this. They asked around whether any offence was taken of this by the women themselves and whether this bothered them in anyway. Their results reflected upon the way women had become largely indifferent towards the portrayal of media and how they had grown accustomed to seeing women presented on the media in such a manner. They did however reflect that this portrayal of women in media did change the way in which females tended to spend money on buying products. They may not have given so much importance to taking care of their physical appearance before but they eventually started noticing how this was becoming an important factor (M. Tiggemann, 2004).

These were just the studies, scholar arguments and surveys conducted by some of the researchers. The following section will however focus on the actual advertisements and role of media that it plays to objectify women and how dismemberment of the women's body is taking place added with the emphasis on external beauty. Some of the advertisement will however show how women are being used to sexually satisfy and eroticize the men in the places and products whereby they were not even required (Gammel, 1999).

Conclusion and Opinion

The above arguments and discussion of this portrayal of women shows just how serious this issue has become and how no one is particularly doing anything to prevent this from spreading. Instead of realizing this undermining of the women's value in society and her part, the women themselves have started internalizing these values and ideas.

The implications and negative effects of this portrayal are costing the women and their respect. It is bad enough to portray women in this way and insulting their biological outlook and the way their bodies function and are shaped but the increased emphasis laid on the need to look perfect and have the perfect figure is being a strain on the women as more and more women are being encompassed into this and they are spending increasing time on making their looks right.

As outlined in one of the previous sections, the implications of this objectification are becoming more severe and are not restricted to older women but are more common among the young girls who are put under pressure from an early age to shape their bodies in a particular manner. This is one reason why girls go on diets, start using drugs to lose weight and engage in other unnecessary activities to measure up to the expectations of society (Roberts, 2000).

What the above advertisements depict is that fact that women themselves do not care if they are presented in such a manner and they take no insult in this. Instead, they are growing to be accustomed to this. They are the victims of this phenomenon and until they say or do something about it, no one will stand up for them.

Their bodies, their image, their respect and everything they do are now revolving around men and their satisfaction and approval. Although women are now standing up for their rights and fighting to attain an equal stance in society, this indifference towards their own degradation is costing them a lot because all their attempts will fail as they are doing nothing about this objectification (Dahlberg, 2008).

We see how women are starting moves and campaigns to show their strengths and their demand to be given equal rights to work and show their strength but what needs to be done way before they walk out into the field is to respect themselves and their bodies. They need to recognize that they should be proud of whom they are and how they look and that is what should make them proud. The urge to constantly change their identity and their look is just an evidence of the fact that they are embarrassed of themselves and they will do whatever it takes to change them.

Women should take pride in who they are and what they are because they are not products, commodities or objects for sale and ownership. They are humans just like men are and they deserve to have their own likes, dislikes and opinions. Women do not exist to provide pleasure to the men and they are definitely not here to serve the men and be their slaves just to be treated like some kind of burden or trash.

But the fact of the matter still remains that no one will recognize this if the victims themselves do not recognize this. From an early age, the females should be taught to love themselves and be satisfied with who they are rather than feeling the pressure to conform to senseless requirements of the society. This change is highly essential and it will result in the elimination of some crucial problems that exist in our society today.