advertisements

While researching a project on women in advertisements and the messages that are sent out to women I was appalled at the information and ads I collected. There seemed to be a definite trend in the evolution of advertisements geared at women. A significant amount of the ads for women were with them portraying the idea of the ideal woman through the eyes of the men of their time. For example, in the 1950's most of the ads portrayed women as perfect delicate housewives getting kicks out of making the perfect meal; and in the 1990's most of the ads portrayed women as sex objects, creating sexual fantasies out of every item being sold. The problem with these advertisements are the messages they send out to young girls watching/reading them. While watching tv or flipping through magazines young girls get images of sexy nurses, sexy astronauts, sexy school girls, or the opposite ideas of women exercising while pushing the baby in a stroller or being super mom. It is as if women need to be complete nymphomaniacs and homemakers at the same time, an impossible notion.
There were two ads specifically that rubbed me the wrong way. One was for some sort of child friendly microwavable food that had 5 children with bubbles under their pictures saying what they dreamt of being when they grew up. Under the boys had "hit a homerun," "ride a two wheeler," and "run my own business," while under the girls read "be a mom," and "decorate your dream house." The second ad had a young girl no older then 8 years old learning how to host parties and be the ideal hostess. AT EIGHT YEARS OLD. My objection to ads like these are not that women shouldn’t want to host parties, decorate homes, be domestic, or least of all want to be a mother. My problem is that the same messages are being sent out over and over again and thus leave young girls without the ability to dream outside of the box society has created for them. These images get into heads and feed insecurities of never being able to reach the ideal womanhood scheme. Many of the ads had women and laundry as a symbiotic being, as if they are intertwined or that no men ever does laundry, or apparently should ever do laundry. One had dishwasher soap be referred to as a spa without ever leaving the home, where apparently once again, women belong doing dishes or laundry. Maybe it is the feminist in me that would love to see an ad not based upon a woman gaining things by her looks, beauty, sex appeal, or perfect culinary skills, but instead achieve greatness by her intelligence or wit. I don’t know, maybe I dream too big!