Gender, Sexuality, and Advertising Images

Advertising images have become almost unavoidable. They are seen on billboards while driving, on platforms and train cars while taking the subway, on TV  between our favorite TV shows, on online streaming websites, and even in the middle of short videos on social media. Since the average person is exposed to so many advertisements daily, these images have lots of influence on social norms. Every advertisement is carefully created and is distributed purposefully. They try to reach a targeted audience with the goal of maximizing profits. More often than not, advertisements transmit messages on sexuality and gender through their illustrations, models, products, and body language. Advertisers associate their products with sexuality, power, fame, and wealth in order to sell people an ideal lifestyle. However, such advertising methods have an adverse social and psychological effects on media consumers, and especially teenage girls.

              The dominant social groups control media and advertisements. Historically, white men have been the dominant social group and have controlled what has been broadcasted and published. Since western societies have been driven by capitalism, media outlets have tried to increase their revenue by reaching out to the dominant audience, which has also historically been white males.  Men have been the targeted audience because they have been the consumers. Mulvey states that the woman’s “eroticism [is] subjected to the male star alone.” (Mulvey, 840). Advertisers display sexual images and at the same time exploit the female body in order to reach out the male audience. In the past few decades, however, women have been consumers as well. Advertisers have realized the financial opportunities in reaching out to women. For that reason, most advertisements now target women.  

Recognizing women as a consumers is not a problem. The problem, however, are the effects that advertisements directed to women and young teens create. Such advertisements display images of an ideal woman, while promoting unhealthy standards of thinness, and convey the idea that a woman’s worth is determined by her physical appearance. These advertisements take away a woman’s self-esteem and sell it back to them with one of their products (Kilbourne 122).  They make women think that they really need that new bag or that new coat in order to be attractive or stand out among their peers, or that teenage girls really need that lipstick and mascara to look better than other girls or to be liked by boys. Thus, women and teen girls are placed in competition with each other. This constant beauty competition between women creates feelings of insecurity, especially among young women. Moreover, media representations of beauty are very high and unrealistic in modern times due to technology, further increasing the problem. Such unachievable beauty standards have long lasting psychological effects on young women for the sake of profit.

Advertisements seem to follow another pattern: hiring white male and female models to promote their products. There is hardly any representation of Black or Hispanic males or females in advertisements. When Black or Hispanic models are present, they are usually in the background. Blacks and Hispanics usually appear on advertisements that are specifically marketed for blacks and Hispanics. Also, models of color in advertisements are usually on the lighter side of the color spectrum. Advertisers hire models of color that are “light skin” and, thus, transmit the message that light skin is superior and more desirable compared to darker skin. They demonstrate Blacks and Hispanics must be “light skin” in order to be valued. These ads can have a severe impact on the self-esteem of young people from diverse backgrounds (Kilbourne 123).

                  As discussed earlier, advertisers have a targeted audience in mind while creating advertisements. The usual audience was white males at first, and then white women were targeted when women became more independent and financially stable. In Commodity Lesbian, Danae Clark states that in order for a market to be addressed, it needs to be identifiable, accessible, measurable, and profitable. However, the lesbian consumer market was not addressed because it did not fit any of the criteria (143). The LGBTQ community was has not been widely addressed as a consumer market because, historically, it has  not been socially acceptable to not be straight.  For that reason, they have been overlooked as a consumer market. In recent years, white homosexual men have been targeted as consumers because they have been identified as a profitable market (due to their financial stability). Even though advertisements now target gay white men, they do so with subtle clues so the products are not negatively associated with homosexuality and, as a consequence, be avoided by the heterosexual market (Clark 143). This marketing method glorifies the “in the closet” lifestyle of gay men. Moreover, as Clark notes, lesbian women still have not been addressed as a consumer market, and their clothing options are limited to those of straight women (Clark 143).
While watching new advertisements, whether on TV or the internet, I immediately notice the stereotypes that they follow or the sexism embedded within them. I also notice it when advertisements promote products without associating them to social norms. The TV shows that I watch, the podcasts that I listen to, and the people that I follow on social media tend to stay away from such images. I watch the Daily Show and Last Week Tonight on YouTube, and both shows have no advertisements online. I also listen to Bill Burr's podcast on his website every Monday, in which Bill Burr reads out a few advertisements towards the middle of the podcast. I have noticed that Burr likes to stay away from advertisements that promote any beauty, racial, or sexual standards, as well as political messages. I like that Bill Burr turns away any advertisements that could possibly harm his followers (and also lose them) and that the other shows have no commercials at all (on YouTube) I think it is better to stay away from commercials that promote social stereotypes in order to increase profits than to let them harm people's self-esteem.

The advertising industry has not changed much over the years, overall.  Marketers still associate their products with sexuality, power, fame, and wealth in order to sell people an ideal lifestyle. There are advertisements that still rely on stereotyped images and behaviors of men and women to assure sales profit. The notion that white, tall, blonde, and thin is the ideal is still upheld, and there are still advertisers and even consumers that will not acknowledge homosexual relationships in advertisements.  Such advertising methods have an adverse social and psychological effects on media consumers, and especially teenage girls.

Works Cited

Clark, Danae. Commodity Lesbianism. Routledge, 1993.

Kilbourne, Jean. Beauty and the Beast of Advertising.

Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Film Theory and Criticism:     Introductory Readings. NY: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-844.