Women exploitation in the media

Abstract

When modern advertising developed in the United States in the late-19th century, the industry was open to a variety of enterprising individuals, including females. Since then, women have distinguished themselves in all facets of the business, creating original and profitable campaigns, and even heading important advertising agencies. By 2008, women comprised half of all employees in advertising and related professions. Nevertheless, agencies in the United States, England, and elsewhere remain bastions of gender inequality, particularly in creative departments, where men outnumber women more than two to one. In this paper, we try to focus on the women exploitation in the media. The paper discusses how advertising companies use women for their promotions. How women are exploited through media. The paper identifies social theories associated with media exploitation of women.

Women exploitation in the media

Introduction

Advertising is an integral part of every advanced country's economy and culture, but as statistics suggest, advertising plays an unusually important role in the United States. Robert Coen, a leading authority on advertising expenditures, estimates that worldwide expenditures for advertising in 2007 were approximately $630 billion. That same year, expenditures for advertising in the United States were about $280 billion. Table 1 shows the relationship between advertising expenditures in the United States and other countries in 2007. It shows that the 6.3 billion people outside of the United States who are exposed to $350 billion worth of advertising, with $280 billion of advertising aimed at the 300 million people who populate the United States: people in the United States are exposed to about twenty times as much advertising as people in other countries.

Discussion

Advertising uses a number of different techniques to persuade consumers to purchase products and often exploits sexuality, showing images of scantily clothed women, generally voluptuous with beautiful features, when selling products that men and women typically purchase. The “sexploitation” of women in advertising is a matter that many feminist critics have dealt with, and so far with little success. Many advertisements, especially in glossy-style magazines, still exploit women's bodies. Now advertisers exploit men as well, in selling clothes, fragrances, and other lifestyle products. Some advertisements for men's fragrances and other male or unisex products have a pronounced homoerotic significance (Sivulka, 2009).

There are a variety of rhetorical techniques used by advertisers to persuade viewers of commercials to purchase products. Some commercials scare people, whereas others are humorous and amuse them. Advertisers were afraid of using humor for many years, because they thought that humor somehow devalued their products. In recent years, however, advertisers have been more positive about humor because they believe humorous ads make people feel good and those good feelings have a halo effect that can be used by companies to sell their products and services.

Some advertisements use heroes, authority figures, and celebrities, hoping their status and fame will convince people to consume things. A French literary theorist, René Girard, argues that what we desire often imitates the desire of those we admire. In his book, A Theater of Envy: William ...