Discussion on The Issue of Women in Advertising

Women in Advertising

In today’s time, advertisements are all over and have a bigger and bigger influence every day on us. They are directed to men and women and determine what they buy. We see advertisements on TV’s, billboard, magazines, and social media. Bill Bryson, the author of “The Hard Sell: Advertising in America,” states that “Advertising was already a well-established phenomenon by the turn of the twentieth century” (122). Bill Bryson makes clear that the advertising industry is getting bigger and bigger and having a greater influence on their audience every day. Advertisers use different tactics to sell their products and one of those tactics they use to sell their product is to put women into the advertisement. Women are used for selling men and women products. Due to the displays of women and their bodies, companies are determined to use their bodies as a tactic to get people in their demographic to buy their product in hopes of achieving their unrealistic bodies.

These women in the advertisements all have things in common. They all are women that the media displays as “perfect.” These advertisements could also be photo-shopped so the women look even better. In William Lutz’s essay, “With These Words I Can Sell You Anything,” he says, “Remember, the ad is trying to get you to buy a product, so it will put the product in the best possible light, using any deviance, trick, or means legally allowed” (69). Advertisers do this to make their audience feel insecure, which makes them feel like this product will make them be even more, beautiful, skinnier, sexier, and also more popular.

Advertisers use women in the advertisement to sell their clothing. This first advertisement from DKNY, shows a man and woman walking down the street. As you can tell, the woman is the main focus. The guy is an accessory to the woman. He is carrying a bag, which looks like might be one of hers. They use him to show the focus by staring at her on the other page. She has long, straight, brown hair, clear skin, tall, and skinny. The model is wearing all black, with a black, zip-up hoodie, while looking into the camera with a passionate, stern face. Instead of trying to get the guy’s attention, she is trying to get the audience’s attention. DKNY’s logo is in big, white, capitalized letters spread out on the two pages, and is placed in the middle. On the bottom of the right page, it says in tiny caps letters “#ONLYINDKNY.” On the left page, it gives us the DKNY website. DKNY is literally putting their name on the woman to prevail that if the audience buys a DKNY product, they will also receive attention from men and hope to look like the model on their ad.

This demographic for this advertisement is for older teenagers and young adults. DKNY wants to make their audience believe that if they wear this brand of clothing that they could be like the woman and the man. It makes men believe that if they wear that clothing they will be able to be with any pretty women they want. It makes girls believe that if they own that clothing then they are one step closer to looking like the woman. The audience neglects and forgets to keep in mind that a woman does not naturally look like this. This model was in hours of hair and makeup with professionals prior to shooting this photo, and it was still most likely photoshopped with DKNY to make her look even more intimidating to the audience with her beautiful features and a man to her side.

The second advertisement is a car advertisement for Cadillac. Cadillac also uses a woman to advertise their product. There is a woman with tan skin, red lipstick, curly brown hair, with a skinny figure. She is wearing a black fur coat, posing on the driver’s side with her arm over the wheel. The model is looking towards the audience with a sexy, stern face. She seems to be very confident with herself. The advertisement is split up into four tiny sections. In the one section, you see the cream leather seats inside the car. There is writing on the Center on the top of the page, in all caps that says, “BREATHTAKING. EVEN IN PARK.” This advertisement may be saying this towards the car, but it is also towards the woman in the car. The car may be breathtaking by itself, but the woman ads to that.

The main focus of this advertisement is the woman instead of the car. Instead of the car being the main focus of the advertisement. This advertisement is trying to sell this car to the higher class. The woman emphasizes more of why it is “breathtaking” while it is in park. This ad is promising that the car will bring attractiveness and attention, which is what most men want. Cadillac put what people want inside of the product to make it seem more desirable. The demographic of this ad is higher class men. Cadillac’s focus of this advertisement is an attractive woman, hoping to pull the attention to older men in hopes to buy their product. A car company is using a woman to sell a product that should not be about the attractiveness of the woman, but the features the car has.

Perfume companies also use women in their advertisements. This third advertisement is a perfume advertisement by Burberry. Burberry is trying to sell their new perfume, Blush, in this demographic. The first thing that caught my eye was the women leaning on the gigantic bottle. They use a woman who is skinny, with shoulder length, brunette hair. She appears to be naked with a blush jacket covering her from the chest down. She is leaning against the big bottle of Blush perfume. This advertisement uses a common weasel word, which is “new.” At the bottom of the left-hand page, in white capital letters, it says, “THE NEW FRAGRANCE.” The background, perfume color, and jacket is all a pink blush color. Pink means unconditional love and nurturing.

The first thing that catches your eye in this advertisement is how big the bottle is. The Burberry company makes the bottle as big as the woman to show that the woman needs the bottle in order to support her. The model in the advertisement is leaning against the large bottle, needing the bottle to be able to sit up. The company does this to make the audience feel like they also need this perfume as support to make them feel beautiful like the model. Furthermore, this ad uses beauty appeal to bring in their audience. The model appears to give a seductive look to the camera to capture the audience’s attention. If the model was looking away from the camera, the audience would not get the same reaction to their product. This demographic is teen and adult women who wish to have the support of the perfume to assist them in making them feel beautiful. Burberry wants you to believe that if you buy this perfume you will feel and smell sexy. The ad also wants women to believe that buying this perfume may also make them feel more confident with themselves and that they can look like the girl in the ad. They want you to believe that you can be beautiful like the woman in this ad if you purchase their perfume.

To conclude, we see that all three of these advertisements share the same tactics. Advertisers know that beauty attracts us as humans. Companies use women’s looks as a tactic to sell their products not only to women, but also to men. As you can see, advertisers use women in many different kinds of ads. All of these women have the characteristic that the media appeals as perfect. Although the media displays them as perfect, it takes a lot of work to look like they do. They don’t wake up and just look like that. As the audience, we have to remember that lots of advertisers use photo-shop to make the ad look even better. They do this to lower our self-esteem and make us feel like that product will help us and make us look even better. They use these “perfect” women to draw us in closer in hopes to buy their product simply due to the beautiful woman on the advertisements.