Sexism and Objectification of Women in Advertising
This paper examines how sexism operates in contemporary advertising through the objectification and sexualization of women. Drawing on scholars including Rosalind Gill, Jean Kilbourne, Erving Goffman, and Evans and Riley, the paper argues that while post-feminist theory frames women's participation in sexually explicit advertising as empowering and liberating, it in fact perpetuates the same male-gaze-driven exploitation that earlier feminist critics identified. The paper traces the shift from overt objectification to what Gill calls "subjectification," analyzes the false values advertising promotes about femininity and womanhood, and concludes that the post-feminist celebration of sexual agency in commercial media is underwritten by the same patriarchal and consumerist structures that feminism originally sought to dismantle.
- Introduction: Sexism in Advertising and the Male Gaze: Introduces objectification of women in advertising
- Post-Feminist Theory and Female Sexual Agency: Post-feminism reframes exploitation as sexual empowerment
- False Values, Objectification, and the Advertising Industry: Advertising distorts femininity with tricks and stereotypes
- Neoliberalism, Consumerism, and the Illusion of Liberation: Consumer culture offers women a false sense of freedom
- Advertising's Destructive Image of Femininity: Kilbourne exposes advertising's harm to female psychology
- Conclusion: Sexism Rebranded: Post-feminist framing rebrands rather than eliminates sexism
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What makes this paper effective
- Engages directly with multiple named scholars — Gill, Kilbourne, Goffman, Attwood, Evans and Riley — integrating their arguments as evidence rather than mere decoration, which gives the critique intellectual grounding.
- Uses specific, recognizable advertising examples (Victoria's Secret Super Bowl ad, Go Daddy, Budweiser, old Schlitz beer ads) to ground abstract theoretical claims in concrete media reality.
- Maintains a clear, consistent argumentative thread: post-feminist framing of sexual agency as liberation is itself a product of the same exploitative system feminism set out to challenge.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective use of counter-argument and rebuttal: it presents the post-feminist position charitably (women as active sexual subjects, consumerism as empowerment) before systematically dismantling it by pointing out that the structural conditions — advertiser control, patriarchal economic power, the male gaze — remain unchanged. This move strengthens the thesis by showing the author has genuinely considered the opposing view.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a survey of sexist advertising tropes and introduces the theoretical tension between feminism and post-feminism. The middle sections examine post-feminist theory through Gill, Attwood, and Evans and Riley, then turn to Goffman and Kilbourne to expose the false values advertising perpetuates. A dedicated section addresses the neoliberal fusion of consumer citizenship and sexual agency. The conclusion ties these threads together, arguing that post-feminist celebration of sexualized advertising is sexism rebranded rather than genuinely eliminated.
Introduction: Sexism in Advertising and the Male Gaze
There are numerous examples of sexism in advertising: from Britney Spears' advertisements for her perfume Curious, in which she strips down to her underwear for the camera, to Victoria's Secret models like Chrissy Teigen undergoing both plastic surgery and photoshopping for the company's lingerie ads, women are routinely objectified for the "male gaze," as Laura Mulvey put it (Turow, 2009, p. 195). While sexism can take many forms — such as the stereotype of women as homemakers ever ready to please their husbands that was promoted in mid-20th century advertisements — in advertising today, sexism is most readily displayed by way of objectification, as seen in Go Daddy ads, Victoria's Secret ads, beer commercials, and so on, where women's bodies are treated as commodities.
Feminism challenged the notion of this objectification of women for a time, but in the post-feminist culture of today, sex has bombarded media and women appear more objectified than ever — and willingly so. Women in the media appear to celebrate their sexuality in a way that would have been frowned upon in the feminist era as a kowtowing to sexism by men (i.e., women acting like nothing more than eye candy for the male gaze). However, as Rosalind Gill (2015) points out, the concept of sex has shifted in the post-feminist era. Likewise, in her essay on empowerment and sexism, Gill (2008) argues that rather than women feeling ashamed of subjecting themselves to the male gaze, they seek to use their sexuality to dominate in today's culture. Gill asserts that what defines the post-feminist model is the shift from objectification to subjectification — in other words, the woman is not thought of as the object of the male gaze but rather the male has become the subject of the female's desire to dominate sexually: "today women are presented as active, desiring sexual subjects who choose to present themselves in a seemingly objectified manner because it suits their (implicitly 'liberated') interests to do so" (Gill, 2008, p. 45). This paper examines how sex is used in advertising to show why this type of media is inherently sexist in spite of the post-feminist perspective that appears to justify or validate the sexually explicit use of the female form to sell products in today's culture.
References
Attwood, F. (2014). Mainstreaming sex: The sexualization of western culture. IB Tauris.
Evans, A., & Riley, S. (2015). Technologies of sexiness: Sex, identity, and consumer culture. Sexuality, Identity, and Society. Oxford University Press.
Gill, R. (2008). Empowerment/sexism: Figuring female sexual agency in contemporary advertising. Feminism & Psychology, 18(1), 35–60.
Gill, R. (2015). Gender and the media. John Wiley & Sons.
Goffman, E. (1979). Gender advertisements. Harper & Row.
Kearney, M. C. (Ed.). (2012). The gender and media reader. Routledge.
Kilbourne, J. (2010). Killing Us Softly 4. Cambridge Documentary.
Turow, J. (2009). The advertising and consumer culture reader. Routledge.
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