ABSTRACT. This paper identifies the ethical issues involved with women\u2019s advertising, and argues that ads can be successful in generating sales without portraying women as things or as mere sex objects, and without perpetuating various weakness stereo- types. A paradigm shift in advertising appears to be at hand. This new model replaces images of women as submissive or constantly in a need of alteration, with a move to reinstate beauty as a natural thing, not an unattainable ideal. This paper also reviews general ethical issues of the advertising industry, including: (1) that advertising equates the pursuit of material gain with human happiness; (2) that advertising pushesi t s

is \u201cgood\u201d for the consumer; (3) that advertising plays on physical appetites and the body; (4) that adver- tising strives to bypass rational thinking, by desensi- tizing the viewer and playing on group dynamics.

This paper will focus on ethical issues pertaining to women\u2019s advertising, and will take the view that it makes business sense for the advertising industry to adopt a new paradigm1that empha- sizes values which women hold to be important, and to discard certain practices, such as stereo- typing women as weak, in need of help, or as sex objects. What I am calling the \u201cstandard paradigm\u201d or \u201cstandard model\u201d has had a grip on women\u2019s advertising since the inception of Virginia Slims\u2019 sponsorship of professional women\u2019s tennis in 1970,2with its emphasis on attaining impossible levels of beauty and thinness. This standard model still dominates women\u2019s advertising today.

the ethical issues peculiar to women\u2019s advertising. Other topics, treated elsewhere in the literature, include false and misleading advertising, regula- tion of advertising by the Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A.),3advertising that affects children and teenagers, questions of bad taste, crudeness or vulgarity in advertising, and con- stitutional parameters of governmental regulation of advertising.

To start out on a positive note, there is a good deal of good advertising. For instance, the popular Lancome line has just launched4a $35 million advertising campaign featuring models who aren o t heavily retouched, leaving some of their freckles and other natural flaws visible. According to a spokesman at the Lancome adver- tising agency, \u201cThere\u2019s less technique to the way the women are photographed, so it\u2019s less artful. This offers women a much more human, approachable, intimate interpretation of beauty, . . . a way of saying \u2018Get in touch with your inner beauty.\u2019 \u201d5This advertising approach, I think, may be the start of a paradigm shift that re- establishes images that encourage you to \u201cfind your own beauty,\u201d rather than images of unat- tainable, idealized, perfection.

I define advertising as a paid announcement, usually targeting a specific market group, designed to influence the purchase of goods or services. Advertising is considered to be com- mercial speech, and as such has been granted certain First Amendment protections over the years.6The purpose of advertising is generally to inform targeted consumer groups of the avail- ability and description of products and services, and to persuade consumers to buy them. Advertising is first of all a sales pitch.

which serves a vital function in society. Without the widespread dissemination of basic facts about the availability of products and services, we would not have the high technological standard of living which has so elevated and enhanced the quality of our lives. I am taking the position that, in itself, advertising is neither morally good nor bad. The ethics of advertising has to do with an evaluation of the content and techniques deployed in given bits of advertising.

Advertising is a pervasive presence in society \u2013 on television, radio,7magazines, newspapers, handbills, posters, billboards, direct mail and on the Internet. Advertising is everywhere. We are besieged with commercials at airport baggage carousels, on corporate telephone lines, on flashing screens at the local market, etc.

and marketing costs came to $620 billion, or $120 for every single person in the world. Today, advertising is even bigger, with the added dimension of Internet advertising. American business spends nearly $167 billion annually to give sales pitches via images of products in advertisements. Advertising far exceeds education spending, as noted by David Korten, a former Harvard Business School professor now working with advertising agencies in Asia:

[C]orporations are spending well over half as much per capita to create corporation-friendly consumers as the $207 per capita the world spends on public education. Furthermore, growth in advertising far outpaces increases in education spending.8

There are several general ethical concerns that have been discussed in the literature over the years.

advertising tends to ratchet up the quest for material gain, leading consumers to believe that happiness depends on attaining a high material standard of living, and acquiring more and more

things. Very little advertising gives emphasis on spiritual goals, on the big picture of what matters in life, or transcendental concerns (such as problems of the poor in faraway reaches of the globe). Advertising often fosters the philosophy that human happiness depends on the possession or prestige value of material things.9

generates its own values, artificial or false as they may be, as to what is \u201cgood\u201d for the consumer. The attitude isn\u2019t whether consumers need or want a particular product. Advertising strives to portray a product as something so appealing that you \u201cought\u201d to desire this thing, that youn e e d it, and that you should buy it. Many think that the advertising industry is too dominant in setting societal values.

plays on our physical appetites, the body, the pursuit of pleasure, and the avoidance of pain. Preoccupation with the body in advertising affects men and women alike by making them more susceptible to persuasion. As Plato observed, \u201cThe body intrudes . . . into our investigations, interrupting, disturbing, dis- tracting, and preventing us from getting a glimpse of the truth.\u201d10

advertising strives to bypass rational thinking. A successful advertising campaign can persuade people to do all sorts of things \u2013 to consume products harmful to themselves such as tobacco, junk food, colas or alcoholic drinks \u2013 or products that are relatively useless \u2013 such as cosmetics. Advertising is today\u2019s counterpart, I think, to the Sophists of ancient Greece, who were criticized because they used illogical methods of persuasion and gave their students more of illusion than truth. Advertising is like that.

often with artistically superb photography, special effects, clever slogans, acting and music. But these entertainment techniques, otherwise which often are truly an art form, are deployed to attract and keep the attention of viewers and make them more susceptible to persuasion.

have the moral duty to \u201ctell the truth\u201d about the product or service advertised. But often some- thing quite indirect is the subject of an adver- tisement. Claims are often subjected such as being \u201cthe best,\u201d the \u201cmost desirable\u201d from among other cars on the market, for instance. Small exaggerations about the excellence of one\u2019s produce or service (\u201cpuffery\u201d) seems morally permissible, since the average person takes this into account as part of the norm, the context, the culture of advertising.

People do not typically admit that they are influenced by advertising, but they are.11 Advertising has been called \u201cthe most influen- tial institution of socialization in modern society. . . .\u201d12Americans are very \u201cculturally conditioned\u201d by ads.13Advertising has the power to change a set of values held by the collective majority. It can influence people to switch their attitude regarding things which they might ordinarily think of as morally wrong \u2013 to an attitude that it\u2019s morally right or acceptable.

The slogans, catchwords, values, mottoes, and other lessons tattooed on young minds even before young people learn to read are not educational but commercial. They displace, contradict, and cancel, in many cases, in advance, those lessons and values which education seeks and will seek at public expense to teach and inculcate.14

six-month-old babies are already forming mental images of corporate logos and mascots. By the time they are three years old, most children are making specific requests for brand-name products.15

relentlessly; (3) professionally developed, with all of the attendant research sophistications to improve the probabilities of attention, comprehension, retention, and/or behavioral impact; and (4) deliv- ered to an audience that is increasingly detached from traditional sources of cultural influence like families, churches, or schools.16

Advertising strives to generate a sense of identi- fication of the viewer with the thing being advertised. Advertising today is almost a \u201cscience\u201d based on techniques that desensitize the viewer and play on collective or group dynamics in order to sell products. Research gained from focus groups with eye tracking devices helps determine how ads are read by audiences. Advertising utilizes teams of experts to translate the desired message into the adver- tising image.

influence of consumer behavior. Subliminal tech- niques are based on the idea that human beings are influenced by, among other things, impres- sions which the brain gathers through our senses. Only a fraction of our total brain\u2019s experience is something conscious to our everyday awareness. That is, our brains take in a much great propor- tion of sensual input or stimulus than our minds admit to ordinary experience. Human beings, it is argued by Freudians and others, form decisions and are motivated to take action in large part based in our reaction to sensory input of which we are largely unconscious.

The constant flow of \u201cpictures\u201d and other visuals in advertising, often in rapid-fire succes- sion, it has been argued, is a technique with several functions: It holds the attention of audi- ences, and to a widely varying extent, it can neutralize the viewer\u2019s faculties. This neutralized state is helpful in order to foster a more passive, receptive frame of mind, a greater suggestibility, a milder state, analogous, roughly speaking to a kind of hypnosis. A \u201cpassive\u201d state is one in