The Harmful Effects of the Objectification of Women in Magazine Advertising Patricia Infante Loyola Marymount University

Abstract This paper analyzes magazine advertisements role in the sexualization of women in its contents. Women are sexually objectified in order to sell products and services meant to attract the attention of consumers (Frederickson & Roberts, 1997). The highly sexualized images promote the so-called ideal woman, thus creating an unrealistic depiction of women that has led to problems such as body dissatisfaction and low self- esteem. As a result of this skewed image of women, there has been an increase in the rates of development of eating disorders and of extreme dieting practices. This paper will address the impact of the objectification of women as well as study how the latter affects the communication of young females through language or behavior.

Harmful Effects of Objectification of Women in Print Magazines Ads Introduction Advertising is among the most effective forms of communication because of its use in influencing individuals to purchase products and services that are newly introduced to the market. As Kilbourne (1999) states, Advertisers like to tell parents that they can always turn off the TV to protect their kids from any of the negative impact of advertising. This is like telling us that we can protect our children from air pollution by making sure they never breathe. Advertising is our environment. We swim in it as fish swim in water. We cannot escape it...advertisings messages are inside our intimate relationships, our homes, our hearts, our heads. (pp. 5758) Most advertisements use people as the subjects meant to represent or promote the goods or ideologies in question, and women more often than not make up the majority of this representation or promotion. In magazine advertising, for instance, the proportion of sexualized women rose from less than one-third in 1964 to one-half in 2003 (Reichert & Carpenter 2004; Soley & Reid 1988). The content in magazines not only displays women's bodies but also shows women engaging in provocative behavior. There is also a higher percentage of models shown partially clad or nude in women's magazines than there is in the pages of men's magazines. The majority of the advertisements featuring women in adolescent girls magazines and womens magazines presented women as sex objects. In the results by Stankiewicz and Rosselli (2008), a reported 75.98% of female models in adolescent girls and womens magazines were shown as sex objects. Consumers who buy these magazines and who are thus exposed to this material are often women. According to Bordo (1993), the two most represented advertised industries in

womens magazines are both the cosmetics industry and the food industry. Interestingly, these two industries have seemingly worked in collaboration as of late, sending the message that the consumer can be beautiful and thin, as long as proper discipline is used to reject high-calories foods. The reward for this discipline is, not surprisingly, a calorie-laden luxurious chocolate. Discourse of Sex There is no problem with a lack of sexual discourse. In fact, the problem is not that no one is talking about women being sexualized in advertising but rather that it is the advertisers who lead the discourse, and set its tone. Sexual discourse is likely best explained by Smart (1988): This intersection of the technology of the confession with scientific investigation and discourse has constructed the domain of sexuality within modern societies as being problematic and in need of interpretation. Indeed to construct a knowledge of the individual the object of the investigation has become to uncover the truth of sex and to reveal its assumed hidden secret. (pp. 120-122) Magazine advertisements interpret sex through the images they display, whether through discovering who does the speaking, the positions and viewpoints from which the speaking is done and the institutions which prompt people to do the speaking as well as how the speaking is stored and distributed (Pugsley, 2007). Magazines encourage the open discourse in sexuality for women by reinforcing the visions that reflect the ideals of society (Pugsley, 2007). These magazines have then become a source for the development of sexuality and messages that shape women's sexual identities.

Sex Sells Because magazine advertisements have become a prime source of sex and sexualized women, it can be said, then, that the advertising industry fuels the sale and purchase of sex. In the advertising industry, sex is used by selling consumer products from the use of advertisements that contain visual or sexual information (Reichert, Heckler & Jackson, 2001). Advertising utilizes its power to exploit sex in the interest of making sales. The old adage of sex sells best captures medias effectiveness in influencing the consumer public to purchase goods, services or ideas: debasing sex in order to sell products has blurred the lines between people and products. Sex sells is a damaging concept on many levels: not only does it forsake truly inspired marketing and potential brand power, it also cheapens the act of human intimacy as nothing more than a tawdry selling point (Jung & Jung-Lee, 2009, p. 275). Ads display sexual themes to attract the attention and interest of the consumers: these kinds of advertisements however typically fail to present or represent any brand information. As scholars have noted, when consumers process the products in a sexual manner, there is a decrease in the recollection for brand information (Grazer & Keesling, 1995; Judd & Alexander, 1983; Steadman 1969). Scholars have also noted that, more pertinent to the present research, emotional responses to sex have been found to influence consumers' evaluations of the ad and the brand (Belch, Holgerson, Belch & Koppman, 1981; Huang, 2001; LaTour, 1990; LaTour & Henthorne, 1993; LaTour & Henthorne, 2003, p. 64). Given that advertising has so much impact, the sexual objectification of women that occurs in fashion advertisements can thus be assessed singularly within the scope of that industry. Sexual Objectification

Sexual objectification is commonly referred to as the practice of treating a person merely as an instrument or object that functions in the interest of increasing or meeting anothers sexual pleasure. Put more simply, a person is devalued and made into an object when being sexually objectified (Zimmerman & Dahlberg, 2008). This kind of objectification can occur in many ways. Among the latter, the most prevalent type of sexual objectification occurs via body exposure such as images of bare stomachs and buttocks or shots of womens cleavage, or when female objects appear in advertisements wearing little to no clothing. The portrayals of women are done in a way that implies that they are being demeaned: they are presented as sex objects meant first and foremost for the enjoyment and the desire of the male gaze. This definition has been employed in content analytic research by Reichert, Lambiase, Carstarphen, and Zavoina (1999): the authors coded female models dress in advertising into the four categories of demure (everyday dress), suggestive (partial exposure of body), partially clad (underwear or swimming suits) and nude (or suggestion of it). In their sample of magazine ads from 1993, the researchers found that 40% of women were in one of the latter three categories. Reichert and Carpenter's findings (2004) indicate that there was an increase in sexual attire and intimate contact from 1983 to 2003, including female models shown in sexually explicit clothing. In 2003, a record 49% of images of female models wearing scantily clad clothing appeared, in stark contrast to the 40% figure of 1993. The sexual objectification of women in fashion advertising has many undue consequences, but the most pressing among these is that women are reduced to something less than human. No Longer Human According to objectification theory (Frederickson & Roberts, 1997), media encourage women to self-objectify by emphasizing and promoting the sexual objectification of womens

bodies. This trend points to the medias tendency to value women primarily for their appearance. Sexual objectification, according to Fredrickson and Roberts (1997), occurs whenever a womans body, body parts, or sexual functions are separated out from her person, reduced to the status of mere instruments, or regarded as if they were capable of representing her (p. 175). Ultimately, the effect reduces a woman to a body where she is not as a whole. Since women are seen as sex objects and disregarded as human beings, societys attitudes and views of women are thus shaped. Among the many consequences of this societal view of women is the beginning of inappropriately sexist comments, deviant sexual behavior and rude sexual remarks (Aubrey, Henson, Hopper & Smith, 2009). Broken Women When the advertising industry takes the women in its content and reduces them to body parts and sexual beings meant for the male gaze, women in the real world become affected by this, and adjust their self-image to match this characterization. Advertising is one of the most potent messengers in a culture that can be toxic for girls self-esteem, and the advertisements contain glossy images of flawlessly beautiful and extremely thin women (Kilbourne, 1999, p. 131-132). Fashion magazine advertisements manipulate young girls by influencing the way that they feel they should look. Studies have shown that exposure to thin models through magazine reading contributes to body dissatisfaction, decreased self-esteem and confidence, and negative feelings of guilt, anxiety, shame, and depression as well as eating disorders in adolescent girls and adult women (Jung & Jung-Lee, 2009, p. 275). The barrage of images of thin female models has led to a falsified notion of the "ideal female beauty." Women are taught from an early age that they must spend enormous amounts of time, energy, and money to achieve the unrealistic and indeed impossible esthetic displayed and glorified in advertisements (Zimmerman & Dahlberg, 2008).

Fashion print ads capitalize and promote the image of beautiful and thin and this is an impossible standard by which to govern oneself. However, women conform or attempt to conform to these expectations by taking drastic measures to alter their bodies to fit that look. Women's inability to resist messages conveyed through magazines causes, in some cases, the development of eating disorder and unsafe or extreme dieting practices. Womens obsession with thinness as well as the need to fit the standard of beauty can both cause an even greater dissatisfaction with their bodies (Lopez- Guimera, Levine & Sanchez-Carracedo, 2010). The complexity of this matter is illustrated in a recent study by Dohnt and Tiggemann (2006): the researchers explored peer and media influences on body image concerns and dieting awareness in 128 girls between the ages of 5 to 8. Awareness of the thin ideal and knowledge of the ways by which achieving this thin ideal occurred in the subjects as early as the age of 6 years: it was that point in a girls life that was identified as the likely age of onset for the desire for thinness (p. 392). Because of the constant exposure to fashion magazines, women often compare themselves to the images of female models. Social Comparison Theory has been studied extensively, and its proponents state that people tend to want to improve themselves and are therefore drawn to look toward similar others for examples of what they should strive to be like (Hesse-Biber et al., 2006; Bissel, 2006; Vandereycken, 2006). There is a direct correlation between the internalization of images in the magazines that has led the development of eating disorders for teenage girls. An Unfair Advantage As Kilbourne (1999) argues, the female body depicted in advertising implicitly conveys the message to women and girls that the ultra-thin body type is the only acceptable body type for women. Little do these women know: most of these images are altered with retouching software

that guarantees that these models will appear impossibly beautiful and thin to the point of nearperfection. Jung and Jung-Lee (2009) found that Advanced technology and product globalization lead to standardized advertisements featuring images of models that are distributed around the world. This marketing practice of global advertising can result in the homogenization of beauty standards to which consumers might refer to assess their own appearance and that of others. (p. 275) Advances in digital photography make it easy to manipulate the public into believing that that idealized standard in beauty can and does exist (Huang, 2001). In actuality, most models do not even look like their advertised likenesses (Kilbourne, 1999). Though readers are consciously aware of the manipulation of the photographs, many readers nonetheless still evaluate the images literally (Huang, 2001). The trend of retouching women has spanned magazine advertising and trickled down to the world of celebrity entertainment and gossip: women in that industry are also being sexualized in the interest of endorsing celebrity. People Magazine, perhaps the most wellknown celebrity magazine, has gone on record about its use of digital technology, claiming through its picture editor M.C. Marden that its use is restricted only to removing blemishes and backgrounds (Reaves, 1991). The practice of airbrushing is now standard practice in most media, and the overwhelming amount of airbrushed images that the public is exposed to can almost certainly guarantee that young women will continue to compare their bodies to the unrealistic and unattainable expectations of the industries commissioning these images (Kilbourne, 1999).Young women flip through the pages of magazines and feel ashamed because they do not live up to the standards set within those pages. This impossible standard to live by has

contributed to low-esteem and body dissatisfaction (La Tour, 1990; Lopez-Guimera, Levine, Sanchez-Carracedo & Fauquet, 2010; Kilbourne, 1999; Zimmerman & Dahlberg, 2008). Conclusion There have been various extensive researches proving the harmful effects that occur when the objectification of women in magazine advertisements is allowed to continue as the norm for magazine advertisements in general (Bordo, 1993; Frederickson & Roberts, 1997; Kilbourne, 1999; Reichert, La Tour & Jooyoung, 2007). This leads to the important question that will guide to further research RQ: How do teenage girls communicate with the unrealistic standards of beauty in fashion magazines? More importantly, is what the teenage girls are saying in keeping with how they are reacting to these standards? Has the damage been done or can media still reverse the path they have put these young women on? While the current state of affairs is bleak right now, the extensive amount of research being done on the topic might still allow for some changes to be made to the societal standards that are set by the media and by which most young girls govern their lives.

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