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Detrimental Use of Sex in Advertising

“Sex in advertising is more often about disconnection and distance than connection and closeness. It is also more often about power than passion” (Kilbourne 490). This article, written by Jean Kilbourne communicates the point that often times, mass media advertising is commonly focused on sexualizing and objectifying women in order to sell a product. She uses many advertisement photos throughout her article to further push her point across, many of which include scantily-clad women, and attractive women swooning over the men using the product being advertised. Women are used in advertising more often as objects to fetishize products, rather than to sell them outright. They are meant to sell a story, and fulfill a fantasy, whether the target audience is men or women. This practice is damaging to our society as a whole, as it perpetuates rape culture and the habit of viewing women as objects whose sole purpose is to pleasure men. Using the book cover,  the author argues that women need to push past the dangers of advertising at a glance. Although some ads may seem appealing, it could be self-deprecating in the long run to buy in to products that use their own bodies against them.

The author, Jean Kilbourne is an award winning author and educator. She is mainly known for her class lectures on how women are portrayed through the media. Her profession and her speeches are from personal experiences. After working in journalism, she saw the negative  effects media had on women, which became a dilemma for her profession and her personal experiences. She sought a resolution to speak out, and it became her main focus to research and learn more into detail about this topic. “She began working in journalism and education, she noticed the absurd arguments that advertisements often make many of them insulting to women’s intelligence and self-esteem.” “Kilbourne began collecting and analyzing advertisements, eventually shaping them into a lecture series and then a film” (Greene and Lidinsky 490). The audience will believe the author because the author used her education and profession in her claim and connected the audience through her personal experience, as an educated woman in the industry. Kilbourne exposed a reality that was not known that explained many self harm motives, claiming a very important topic inspiring others to analyze and be conscious of what they are reading into.

The digital image shows a woman's eye looking up with an alcoholic drink on her pupils, the imagery of this is the realization of intoxicants we consume. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, realizing the importance of relationships in all of our lives, we could seek to learn relational skills from women and to help men develop these strengths in themselves? In fact, we so often do the opposite. The popular culture usually trivializes these abilities in women, mocks men who have real intimacy with women.” (Kilbourne 493).  In this claim, The author focuses on how men and women should come together and learn the ability to communicate without the media's influence. The way the audience will perceive this as it gives them a self empowerment not only as one-self but as a community to break away the media's influence. The media targets women in a negative way by showing men how to treat a women and showing women that they will always be below a man. The author showing these examples gives the audience the opportunity to change their subconscious perspectives on themselves and how they can come together and stop harming each other.

Kilbourne noticed that as a student and even after, she was rewarded more for her looks than for her intelligence and academic superiority. “It would be foolish to suggest that advertising is the cause of violence against women… these problems are complex and have many contributing factors. There is no doubt that flagrant sexism and sex role stereotyping abound in all forms of the media… it is difficult to separate media effects from other aspects of the socialization process and almost impossible to find a comparison group,” (Kilbourne 512). The claim is rhetoric from the author’s point of view owing to change the bad habit in the society of using women in advertising. Using women in advertising for marketing can increase rape culture in the society, and introduce women as objects whose sole purpose is to pleasure men. If people are able to stop using women’s body for marketing and looking at the world from a different eye then they will take on a constructive action to make it happen.

The digital image can get people's attention, and it makes people think in a different way about using women in advertising. The colors used in the image can be found in the natural scenery. Most of the colors in the image are light, and exhibit sad emotions of women. The author explains how the men are encouraged not to take “no” for an answer, a sure cause of many rapes today. The image shows the distraction widely noted by the reflection of the martini glass in the woman’s eye, to take note of the way young women’s eye can wander in the current day and age. For instance; the shaving gel ad, a man standing over a lady who is either saying or screaming “no” (Kilbourne 494). People must stop companies using women's bodies for marketing. “For example in one advertisement about the men’s cologne, where two beautiful women are looking at a man who is not even looking at them” (Kilbourne 492). There is continuous portrayal of treating women badly in social media and advertisements. In these advertisements, it is detrimental to the reputation of women as a whole to be treated as less than people.

The intended audience of this article is young, impressionable adults, who still may not have a grasp on strategies in the media. The author chose this group because this is a group that could still learn from the teachings, and be able to pick up on strategies that do more harm than good on society in the long run. “Sex in advertising is pornographic because it dehumanizes and objectifies people, especially women, and because it fetishizes products, imbues them with an erotic charge-which dooms us to disappointment since products never can fulfill our sexual desires or meet our emotional needs” ( Kilborne 493). The claim communicates the strategies that are used by advertisers, while consumers are so desensitized, it subconsciously affects how the public sees women on a day to day basis. This brings a point to the audience, to get them to realize undertones of argument they may not have originally noticed before the point was brought before them. This article point out the not-so obvious strategies used in the media to use sex to sell products, whether it’s to objectify, or to incite jealousy.

It is a well known fact that as a society, Americans over sexualize products in advertisements, the media, pop culture, television. It has become such a norm in society, seeing a naked body doesn’t even get a second glance anymore. “Most of us become numb to these images, just as we become numb to the daily litany in the news of women being raped, battered, and killed.” (499).  The author uses pathos to get to the reader’s feelings for seeing past the brutality put on the television on a regular basis. The audience sees abrupt language to bring their attention to the brutality being overseen on a regular basis, and realizes the mass desensitization toward things of the sort. People see these derogatory messages and don’t realize the harm that is being done, especially the way it desensitizes their view of the human body and sexuality in pop culture.

In conclusion, the author uses her experience in journalism and the real world to communicate the disheartening message being thrown into the media on a regular basis. If women’s bodies are insinuated as objects only for pleasure, they will be treated as nothing other than that when confronted by men in the world, and even by women.

Work Cited

Green, Stuart and April Lidinsky, editors. From Inquiry to Academic Writing. Third edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2015.

Kilbourne, Jean. “Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt.” From Inquiry to Academic Writing, edited by Stuart Greene and April Lidinsky. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2015. 442-55.