Friday, September 30, 2011

Vending machines - Where Guys Can Grab Candy, Gum, Chips, and... Girls?

This week's blog post: How advertisements objectify women and how these ads affect men and women. In my search for an ad that turns a woman into an object, I went to Google images. What I found was a multitude of ads that sexualize women and emphasize mainly their legs or breasts. I was horrified at some of them. There was a Burger King commercial that really disgusted me:
Image found at http://hodgepodgepage.wordpress.com/

I'll let you react to that one, but as for the ad that I chose to analyze, here it is:

Image found at http://holisticmum.blogspot.com/2009/12/vending-women.html
This advertisement (believe it or not) is for shoes! My attention - and I'm sure yours too - was on the fair-skinned, scantily clad women in the vending machine. It was also on the man seemingly deciding on which model he wants to buy.
Men can be affected by this ad and may start to think of women as objects used only to satisfy pleasure. On the other side of the spectrum, women may begin to think that the right body type is super-skinny and the right outfits are skimpy.
If we’re looking at men, the slogan in the ad, “Live your fantasy,” implies that men will have their pick of the girls if they wear the shoes being advertised. However, what is the fantasy if it is a woman viewing the advertisement? To be passive and wait for a man to choose her and ultimately buy her from a vending machine like a commodity?
Cornel West says it best, "The reduction of individuals to objects of pleasure is especially evident in the culture industries – television, radio, video, music – in which gestures of sexual foreplay and orgiastic pleasure flood the marketplace."
Why does the media project this so much?
I should mention that this ad was displayed in India. It is showing that fair-skinned Indians are more beautiful and right. Also, I have found out that women in India lighten their skin before their wedding day in order to look as white as possible. As mentioned in class, whiteness is not natural and the mass media should not deem it natural.

Sources

West, Cornel. Race Matters. Print.

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7 comments:

  1. KelseyOctober 2, 2011 at 3:41 PM

    I really like the ads that you looked at because the burger king ad well... Anyways with the vending machine ad, why do you think this particular company chose to use women in the vending machines instead of men? Because don't stereotypically don't women buy shoes more often than men.

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  2. Brianna TothOctober 2, 2011 at 4:31 PM

    I think this company chose to use women in the vending machine because they were focused on having four female models in their ad. They probably thought it would be more effective to sell shoes to men by showing the men what the company thinks they want to see: attractive women in the palm of their hand. This is (according to the company) every man's fantasy.

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  3. KMB93October 2, 2011 at 5:44 PM

    Do you think that if the vending machine ad were flipped to put women in the position of buying a man it would still have the same reaction on the audience?

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  4. Brianna TothOctober 2, 2011 at 6:00 PM

    Yes, I do think that the audience would have the same reaction, because they're focused on shoes and flipping the roles wouldn't affect them.

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  5. KimmyOctober 2, 2011 at 7:14 PM

    Do you feel that woman are often looked at as more of a commodity in the media than as a person, such as this ad is showing?

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  6. karleysaysOctober 2, 2011 at 7:19 PM

    What do you think if women ruled the advertisement world, do you think we would objectify men like they do to us? Also, I saw that Burger King ad too.. It's disgusting.

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  7. Brianna TothOctober 3, 2011 at 9:47 AM

    Kimmy- Yes, I do think that women are often looked at as a commodity.

    Karley- I think that if there were more women in the world of advertisement, the roles would be reversed.

    ReplyDelete

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