Advertising and Women

In both the Bell Hooks clips and the Killing us Softly clips, I found very relevant information relating to our topics this week. Bell Hooks talks about representation being a large portion of our lives and whether we like to believe it or not, we are all influenced by what we see in the media and how everything is represented. I remember watching the Killing Us Softly videos in my high school psychology class which got me to start looking at advertisements differently. Women are sexual and promiscuous which apparently sells objects and ideas to the general public. Most adds I see objectify women and turn them into things to sell the objects. This is very degrading because it turns women into something they are not. Similarly, many of the photos of models we see are photoshopped to an extreme where the ad companies put different parts of different women together to create some desirable, unattainable women who other women want to be and men want to be with. This is very interesting because women in this society idealize models they see in advertising, but the models themselves aspire to be that too. The advertising agencies have become so consumer driven that they use what sells, in this case women. If men are in ads, they are seen a masculine and more superior to the women. This creates an ideal for men. This relates back to the Barbie article because Barbie is also unattainable and has changed throughout the years with our society.( I posted a pic of this in my group process) Barbie is disproportionate and has too many careers- she would be considered crazy or weird in this society, but because she has become such an icon to people, especially little girls who barbies are targeted to, more and more people are growing up thinking this is the norm. I think something needs to drastically change with the way Barbie looks as well as advertising. I was watched a documentary and apparently the models on the runways and in media are only 11 or 12 years old- they haven't even hit puberty. People need to realize that wanting to look like them is never going to be attainable because they are TWELVE years old.