Running Head: CONSTANT BOMBARDMENT 1

Constant Bombardment: The Harm and

Objectification of Women in Advertisements
Kayla Sanders
ENGL 102-02HY



































Running Head: CONSTANT BOMBARDMENT 2

Abstract
Advertisements constantly bombard our lives. Every day we see thousands of advertisements that tell us what to
buy, what to think, and how to feel. Everyday women are objectified and harmed by advertisements. Advertisements
produce a fake ideal portrayal and objectification of women: Advertising is our environment. We swim in it like a
fish swims in water. We cannot escape it advertisings messages are inside our homes, our hearts, and our heads
(Kilbourne, 2000, p. 57-58).










































Running Head: CONSTANT BOMBARDMENT 3
Constant Bombardment: The Harm and
Objectification of Women in Advertisements
Advertisements are everywhere. They are there to tell you what to buy, how to act, and what to think. We
are constantly bombarded by advertisements. You cannot open a magazine, watch television, listen to the radio, or
surf the Internet without seeing at least five advertisements selling a variety of products. We as consumers know that
the ads are meant to get us to buy products companies are selling, but we rarely know how effective advertisements
are. The public rarely knows that advertising companies create their ads to go deeper than the conscious minds of
their audience. What media portrays goes deep down into the subconscious and unconscious mind of people and
has wide repercussions not only on their lives, but also on the lives of those around them (Prasad, 2005, p. 19).
Advertisements often carry their own ideologies, views of life, and philosophies. These are often distorted views of
reality. A major issue with advertising over the years is the objectification of women. Women are often portrayed as
selling an item, but these women are stripped of their personhood. Women are portrayed as something that can be
bought, used, and returned. Advertising companies objectify women everyday by showing them as less than human,
making them void of all emotion and life. Women in ads are portrayed as mere objects and not as human beings.
This fake portrayal of women is unethical, disturbing, and wrong.
Advertising companies and sex-radical feminists believe that the way woman are portrayed in
advertisements is not wrong or harmful to women. Advertising companies hold the belief that they are giving the
people what they want. If the public did not want this view of women then it would not be as effective as it is in
selling products. The sex-radical feminists believe the sexual and objectified portrayal of women in advertisements
empowers women, because it gives them sexual power over men. In a study done by Amanda Zimmerman and John
Dalburg (2008) they found that contemporary women may be unfazed by the sexual objectification found in
todays advertising. They may choose to exercise their girl power (p. 73). These groups are oblivious of the harm
advertisements cause to women and to society. All they care about is the money their advertisements bring in.
Objectification is the act of stripping a person of their dignity and making them seem no more than an object.
Both sexes have been objectified in advertisements but women have been and are being far more objectified than
men. Advertisements portray the unattainable images of perfect women. The real woman is nothing like this
portrayed woman; therefore this portrayal can cause many problems and distortions in reality. The real women end
up with low self-esteem and body image problems. They try to become like the perfect woman in the ad, which is
Running Head: CONSTANT BOMBARDMENT 4
never going to happen, because the woman portrayed in the ad is fake and would never exist if it were not for editing
technology. The advertisements in magazines present women that are no more than the products of opinion and
fancy: These images tend to be masks of mannequins; there seems to no longer be any attempt to reference the
real (Thornham, 2007, p. 46).
A group of University of Calgary researchers state:
Photoshopping and manipulating photos has become such a regular occurrence that we often see many
distorted images on a daily basis without questioning them. Issues that have risen with the increased use
of Photoshop are seen to occur mostly in journalism and advertisement[s] and have placed an immense
amount of pressure on young females to achieve the look of the technologically altered ideal women.
(Cheung, 2010)
This team argues that the use of editing technology presents an unreal, unethical, impossible standard for women to
achieve. This group of researchers feels that the use of Photoshop to manipulate images has a negative effect on
women's self-image, self-esteem, and self-satisfaction (Cheung, 2010, paragraph 1).
Another group that is against the presentation of the perfect woman is Dove. In their Campaign for Real
Beauty, Dove uses unedited pictures to show that you do not have to be skinny, perfectly smooth, or perfectly
shaped in order to be beautiful. They are an advocate for true beauty and have been trying to counter the use of the
perfect woman in advertisements. They conducted a study called The Real Truth About Beauty: A World Report,
which confirms the belief that the definition of beauty has become unattainable. This study consisted of 3,200 20-
minute phone interviews with women between the ages 18-64 from 10 countries. Dove found that only 2% of
women they surveyed around the world choose beautiful to describe their looks, fewer even than those who chose
the words attractive (9%), feminine (8%), good-looking (7%) or cute (7%). They also found that the
majority of women they surveyed around the world remain only somewhat satisfied with their beauty (58%),
physical attractiveness (59%) and facial attractiveness (58%). Their study also found that 68 % of the women they
surveyed around the world strongly agree that the media sets an unrealistic standard of beauty and 75 % of these
women wish that the media did a better job in portraying the diversity of women's physical attractiveness, including
size and shape, across all ages (Etcoff, 2004, p. 9-20). Dove reveals that the thin-ideal image of the perfect woman
is causing women to think of themselves as less than beautiful. Dove also created a video titled Evolution. This
video shows the process of turning a real woman into the fake perfect woman that is portrayed in a makeup ad.
Running Head: CONSTANT BOMBARDMENT 5
The video starts out with an ordinary woman without makeup. The video proceeds with the addition of lighting,
makeup, hair styling, and finally the Photoshop manipulation of the photo. The video ends with the final product of
the advertisement, with the tag line No wonder our
perception of beauty is distorted (Dove, 2006, 1:01). The
beginning and end product can be seen in Figure 1.
More often than not women in advertisements are
wearing very little clothing. Their eyes are void of all
meaning and blankly stare back at the viewer. In some
advertisements, a woman seems to be part of the scenery and
does not seem like a person. In other cases, it is hard to
determine what is being sold: the women or the clothes, shoes,
or perfume. In an ad by Tom Ford (Fig. 2), a woman stands
completely nude next to a man clothed in a white suit. The
woman is turned sideways to the viewer, her head is tilted
back while her left hand rests on her bare hip and her right
hand holds a cigarette. She is wearing a pair of sunglasses and
a bracelet. The man stands slightly behind her. He is dressed in
a nice white suit and is drinking something out of a bottle. He
is looking at the viewer. If you did not know what Tom Ford
sold, you would have no idea what this ad is for. Are they
selling the naked woman or are they selling the suit the man in
the back is wearing?
In another advertisement series by Tom Ford a
womans naked body is used to sell a new line of mens
fragrance (Fig. 3). In one ad from this series the bottle of
Tom Ford cologne is resting between the womans closed
legs. A second ad from this series the woman in the ad is
holding the bottle of cologne between her naked breasts. The third ad from this series is probably the worst. The


Figure 2

Figure 1.

Figure 3
Running Head: CONSTANT BOMBARDMENT 6
naked woman in the ad is laying on her back her legs are open and to either side of her, the bottle of cologne is
conveniently placed right between her legs, preventing the viewer from seeing her private parts. This series of
advertisements dehumanizes a womans body. It shows that a womans body is only good for selling things. The
woman in the ad is objectified and sexualized; she no longer has any of her dignity.
In a study by Julie Stankiwictz and Francine
Rosselli (2008), fifty-eight magazines were studied, including
mens, womens, adolescent girls, entertainment, business
and news magazines. Among the magazines that were used in
this study are Cosmopolitian, Elle, Glamour, Good
Housekeeping, Harpers, Black Men, Details, ESPN, Esquire,
Black Enterprise, Forbes, Newsweek, Times, Martha Stewart
Living, National Geographic, Parents, Cosmo Girl, Elle Girl, Seventeen, Teen Vogue, and many more. This study
was conducted in order to examine the extent to which women were portrayed as victims and the extent to which
they were portrayed as sex objects. Stankictz and Rosselli defined a woman as being portrayed as a victim if there
was an ambiguous act of violence against her, a man overpowering her in a sexual act, if the woman appears lifeless,
if the woman appears sick, if a woman is being lied to, watched, or tricked without her knowledge in an
inappropriate situation, and/or if the woman in the advertisement appears to be visibly afraid, angry, depressed,
disgusted, or vulnerable (584). Stankwictz and Rosselli said that a woman is considered a sex object if her facial
expression, posture, activity, make-up, camera angle, and amount of skin signifies a sexually explicit environment
(583). In these magazines there were 1,988 advertisements that portrayed women or female bodies in them. In
accord with Stankiwictz and Rosselis description of what it means to be a victim and a sex object, an average of
32.27% of advertisements portraying women from mens, womens, and adolescent girls magazines portrayed them
as victims and an average of 65% of the advertisements portraying women in mens, womens, and adolescent girls
magazines portrayed women as sex objects.
Another common theme in advertising is violence. Women are often portrayed as being submissive to
men. In some cases, actual violence is portrayed in advertising. This portrayal of violence causes a trivialization of
violence against women in our society. As Kilbourne (2000) states:
At the very least, [such imagery in advertisements] helps create a climate in which certain attitudes and

Figure 4
Running Head: CONSTANT BOMBARDMENT 7
values flourish, such as the attitude that women are valuable only as objects of mans desire, that real men
are always sexually aggressive, that violence is erotic, and that victims of sexual assault asked for it. (p.
290-91)
In a Dolce and Ganbbana advertisement (Fig. 4), a
shirtless male is pinning down a woman. She is wearing a
black swimsuit and tall black heels. Her heels are flat on
the ground and her weight is being supported by her
shoulder blades so her hips are off the ground. The male
that is pinning her down is kneeling beside her and
pinning her hands above her head. She is looking away
from him and does not appear to be fighting back; she
looks completely blank and emotionless, like an object that is about to be used. There are four other men in this ad
standing around the central figures. They are all watching to see what is going to happen and probably waiting for
their turn. This ad leaves enough open to imagination but it is clear that what is most likely happening is gang rape.
As a viewer it is unclear what this ad is trying to sell.
Another ad that portrays outright violence towards women is an ad that is put out by MTV (Fig. 5). The
lower half of a womans body is shown. Her legs are wide open and her right hand rests on her skinny flat stomach.
A mans hand is shown holding a handgun that is pointed at the woman's exposed private parts. Not only does this
ad objectify women by showing only part of her body and separating it from her personhood, it is showing that men
are dominant over women and that they can do anything to them. This ad was put out by MTV in order to promote
safe sex. The people who created this ad are trying to prevent young teens from promiscuity, because of how
dangerous it is. Having promiscuous sex is as dangerous as having a handgun pointed at your most intimate parts or
so says this ad.
All advertising agencies agree on that fact that sex sells. In media and advertising the most common way to
sell something is by using sex and promiscuity. Advertising is often seen as the pornography of everyday life
(Reichert & Lambaiase, 2006, p. 199). Almost constantly, the female image is being seen through the eyes of a male
fantasy. She lies on the bed with her legs up and open. She stares seductively ahead daring you to come closer, while
each hand grasps a stocking on either leg, pulling them further open and more inviting. Surprisingly this is a

Figure 5
Running Head: CONSTANT BOMBARDMENT 8
description of an ad for socks by American Apparel (Fig. 6).
Advertising exploits women and it constantly strips them of
their dignity and makes them an object that can be used for
sexual fantasy. Eyes that seduce have no meaning. Their
meaning being exhausted in the gaze as a face with makeup
is exhausted in its attraction of the void because all is
removed from the self. It is plunged into secrecy and absorbs
its surrounding (Thornham, 2007, p. 37). Advertising can
be the fullest expression of the unspoken, taboo desires of
society. Advertising is more damaging to women than frank
pornography, because at least when you are looking at porn
you know what you are looking at. According to Reichert and Lambaise (2006), sex in advertising is pornography,
because it dehumanizes and objectifies people, especially women (p. 215).
The way women are portrayed in advertisements harms women. It causes self-esteem problems, body
image distortions, and negative and distorted views of sexuality. According to the American Psychological
Association the sexualization of girls and women in advertisements causes cognitive and emotional issues, issues
with mental and physical health, issues with sexuality, attitude and beliefs, as well as impacting others and society.
These include self-objectification, low self-esteem, eating disorders, depression, sexual problems in adulthood,
misconceptions of femininity and sexuality, narrow ideals of female sexual attractiveness, and an increase of
sexism, sexual harassment, and as well as an increase of sexual violence. (American Psychological Association,
2010). The sexualization of women in advertisements causes and attitude of self-objectification. The portrayal of
women in advertisements encourages women to look at their appearance in the third-person perspective. Due to
constant exposure to advertisements, women are likely to experience states of self-objectification several times a
day. This third-perspective view of themselves puts women at risk for developing more serious disturbances of
mood and body satisfaction, such as depression or eating disorders, appearance anxiety, as well as mood and body
dissatisfaction (Harper, 2007, p. 655).
Advertising is our environment. We swim in it like a fish swims in water. We cannot escape it...
advertisings messages are inside our homes, our hearts, and our heads (Kilbourne, 2000, p. 57-58). Advertising is

Figure 6
Running Head: CONSTANT BOMBARDMENT 9
a prominent part of the twenty-first century. The average American sees an average of 3000 ads in a day.
Advertising has absorbed all cultural forms. It is no longer a means of communication. It is its own commodity; a
saturated and empty form that effaces walls, streets, and facades (Thornham, 2007, p. 46). Advertising is meant to
manipulate the consumer into buying their product, but often times it is unclear what is being sold. Advertising
targets the subconscious, making it easier to see women as objects and blurring reality. People who create ads need
to stop this portrayal of women, because it is causing and unbalance in todays society. Girls are obsessed with body
image and develop eating disorder; young girls are having sex at a younger age; women are being seen as inferior,
and violence and rape against women still occurs in great numbers: What is created by a few becomes the way it is
for the rest. We see, hear, and read only what is accepted. (Wiley, 2008, p. 108). Do not let this fake image of
women portrayed in advertisements that is created by a few, overtake all cultural forms and cause harm to our
mothers, our sisters, our daughters, and more importantly ourselves. Our society needs to take up responsibility and
try to improve the mess they made.















Running Head: CONSTANT BOMBARDMENT 10
References
American Apparel. (2010), [Advertisement].
American Psychological Association. (2010). Report of the APA task force on the sexualization of girls (2
nd
ed.).
Wasington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Cheung, J., Haygatova, V,. Nickle, S., & Odland, j. (2010) Maybe shes born with it maybe its photoshop.
Univesity of Calgary. Retrieved from http://wiki.ucalgary.ca/page/Maybe
_She's_Born_With_It,_Maybe_It's_Photoshop
Dolce & Gabbama. (2007, October). [Advertisement]. Esquire.
The Dove Campaign (2008) Evolution [Advertisement]
Dove (2006) Evolution [Video]
Etcoff, N., Orbach, S., Scott, J., & Agostino, H. (2004) The real truth about beauty: A global report. Dove, a
Unilever Beauty Brand.
Harper, B., Tiggemann, M. (2007) The effect of thin ideal media images on womens self objectification,
mood, and body image. Sex roles, 58, 649-657. Doi 10.1007/s11199-007- 9379-x
Kilbourne, J. (2000) Cant buy my love: How advertising changes the way we think and feel. New York, NY:
Simon & Schuster.
Prasad, K. (Ed.). (2005) Women and media: Challenginf feminist discourse. Delhi: Womens. Riechert, T., &
Lanbaise, J. (Eds.). (2006) Sex in consumer culture: The erotic content of media and marketing.Mahwah, NJ: L.
Erlbaum Associates.
Stankiewicz, J. M., & Rosselli, F. (2008) Women as sex objects and victims in print and advertisements.
Sex Roles, 58, 579-589. doi: 10.1007/s11199-0079359-1
Thornham, S. (2007) Women, feminism, and media. Edinburgh UP.
Tom Ford. (2007). [Advertisement].
Tom Ford (2007). The first fragrance for men by Tom Ford. [Advertisement].
Wiely, M. C. (Ed.). (2008) Women, wellness, and the media. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge scholars.
Zimmerman, A., & Dahlberg, J. (2008) The sexual objectification of women in advertising: A contemporary cultural
perspective. Journal of Advertising Reseach,71-79. doi: 10.2501/s0021849908080094

Running Head: CONSTANT BOMBARDMENT 11