Advertising messages today are absolutely everywhere, from websites to huge posters emblazoned onto the sides of our public transport. According to research done by the Guardian in 2005 the average UK citizen will see up to 3,500 advertising messages per day, and it has been estimated that we will spend approximately 3 years of our lives watching television adverts. They are unavoidable, but seldom do we question the impact that they have on our lives. After all their primary objective is to manipulate us into having a certain opinion about something, usually making us think that a product is worth buying. However it would be erroneous of us to assume that they only things we are being sold here are the material items. No adverts are constantly trying to sell us the illusion of normalcy, they tell us that the advert represents what is normal and any difference from it is deviant and wrong. They send us a clear, omnipresent message instructing us on what we should be.
So, what is advertising telling women to be? Unfortunately, the first and sometimes only priority of women in advertising is how they look. They are indoctrinated with this message from an obscenely early age; studies have shown that 50% of children’s toy adverts aimed at girls discuss physical appearance, but virtually none aimed at boys do. These girls are taught from this ridiculously early age that they should spend inordinate amounts of time, energy and above all money to achieve what is most important; physical beauty. Even worse, it isn’t just beauty, but a very specific type of beauty. Women in advertising are almost exclusively represented as very young and slim, predominantly white and absolutely flawless. They are made to feel ashamed and guilty when they fail, which inevitably they do, as the images of women shown in adverts have been airbrushed beyond reality, the look that they present completely unattainable, even by those in the images themselves. When the supermodel Cindy Crawford spoke of the images of her that were used in advertising she said, ‘I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford’. These sorts of images are incredibly damaging for young women, especially when viewed from an early age. 68% of women said that after seeing images of airbrushed models in magazines they felt unhappy with their own appearance. What makes these images even more damaging is the fact that this unrealistic beauty is often the only thing that women are judged and valued on. Therefore if a woman feels unattractive then she is more likely to feel worthless and depressed. Teenage girls are 50% more likely to experience a major depressive spell than boys.
Sadly this is not the only way in which advertising unfairly represents women. Adverts often objectify women’s bodies, turning them into purely decorative things without feelings or thoughts. Examples of this can be found everywhere, from PETA’s 2010 campaign that equated women’s bodies with pieces of meat to the use of naked women as tables for handbags in fashion magazines. This objectification of women can have severe consequences; not only does lower the self esteem of women, it is linked to widespread acts of violence perpetrated on women. Of course I’m not saying that these images directly cause violence against women, it isn’t that simple. However turning sentient human beings into objects without thoughts or emotions is almost always the first step towards justifying violence against them, something that is also evident with racism and homophobia.
