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Women imagined in advertising => Gender, sex and society

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eddie:
Good point but you're wrong about leg shaving  though, it didn't develop with the safety razor it goes back thousands of years, Greek paintings show the ideal woman as hairless.

Alex C:
That's largely incidental, however. Most art and fashion didn't really have much in the way of bared legs for a long time. Leg shaving became common largely due to the development of the safety razor alongside the development of shorter hemlines, pushed along by fashion and advertising. More than anything, it's a sexual dimorphism thing; ie, the traits we notice most in the opposite sex are the traits that we don't have. That's part of how breasts became a fetishized in some cultures; men don't have them and so it's easy to sexualize them.

tania:
for me the issue isn't so much the fact that sex sells as it is that sex in advertising almost always goes hand in hand with perpetuating gender roles which depict women as weak and subservient to men, and while i understand why it sells, explanation isn't the same thing as justification and i think it is a really important thing to recognize and discuss. everyone knows that if you flip through almost any magazine you can find billions of advertisements depicting skinny half-naked women, and it can be argued this really messes with people's body image, but what i think is equally (if not more) important is that these aren't usually just women standing around being happy and doing their thing, they are women who are depicted looking away from the camera or lying helplessly on the ground or pouting or wearing so much makeup it kind of looks like they got punched in the face and often it doesn't really look like they are enjoying themselves at all, it looks more like they are kind of vulnerable and terrified and have sort of resigned to the fact that you are looking at their body. it is the sort of thing where the more you look at it and think about it the freakier it really is. it happens with men too, but i remember reading a media analysis a while back about how women are more likely to be shown in advertisements doing certain things like lying down rather than standing, or looking up at rather than level with the camera, or averting their eyes rather than making eye contact. of course, from here it can be argued whether or not this actually affects how people view gender and sexuality. personally i think it has a really big effect, at least on a subconscious level.

gis results for "women advertising" -

Drill King:


Okay, since this isn't really meant to be a debate, I would like to say that I am so sick and tired of people saying that girls that are very thin, or girls that are built like me are 'unnatural' or 'unreal'. I am very much so real and so are several of my friends who are 5'10, 115lbs, healthy, and beautiful.

Growing up with a mother who has always been extremely petite, modeled for most of her young life, and when she was FULL term pregnant, was all of about 110lbs. I have a very different view of body types, extreme thinness is a very natural look for me, when I see women who are quite overweight, THAT looks unnatural to me, I think it's very unfair of the presenter to represent everyone's concept of normal as based off advertising and media rather than the fact that people like this exist and it's very plausible that they are 'real'.

I really agree with her on many points, but about halfway through I was getting frustrated. Yes seeing gender roles being perpetrated in advertising is detrimental to our society. However, the fact that she seems to like to make it seem that a sexuality that is for example, submissive or dominating, or aggressive, is bad. Is pointing out just as many labels. I really wish that it could be okay to not want to be in an 'exclusive loving relationship', and that it's okay to be beautiful in the general sense and it's okay to be beautiful unconventionally, it's just okay to be people. Personally I dislike the aggressive preying on these things, but that's advertising, our desire to be beautiful our desire to be happy. Hell even advertisements for products that are 'body conscious' or 'self esteem pro motive' are preying on the conscientious consumer.

Personally I think that issues with advertising are not so much that they are getting more extreme, while it is, people are not being taught what is real and what isn't. When I was very young, both me and my sister were taught that we would never look like each other, we were probably going to dislike parts of ourselves, and that in general, the ideal of the media, is impossible.

Now, my sister is quite short, VERY curvy, more stocky, and beautiful, she loves herself. Yet I will openly admit to having body issues that consistently stem from the fact that people have told me my entire like that the body type I have is 'impossible' 'unnatural' or 'won't last most than a year'. When I was younger and quite thin, I would look in the mirror and see myself overweight, I would see myself as being huge because people told me my body was impossible.

When someone is telling a teenage girl that she looks like a barbie, and the negative connotations that come from that perspective in intellectual circles is very painful. I find myself less accepted in certain academic circles because I ENJOY looking good, I ENJOY being thin, I ENJOY myself, suddenly this consideration of my physical appearance, my BODY the thing that HOUSES my mind, makes me worthless or vapid. There seems to be two sides, the desire of a body and not a mind, and the thought that the desire of a body makes one stupid. The people that know me best are people that value me for my mind, and the way I present myself.

God I am high on codeine. I am sorry if I am stepping on any toes, but please, women who are trying to promote self body image, yes it's less common but for christ's sake stop using words like unnatural. People are beautiful, people always want a partner beautiful inside and out, I don't think this is a negative desire.

OH god I hope this makes sense.

Alex C:
Yeah, see, I kinda forget about those really ridiculous ads because the only magazines I get are Popular Science, and National Geographic. Now I have to know that shit exists again.


What the hell people?

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