Sexism in Advertising

Advertisement Analysis

Noxema, Pretty, Smart, and excellent sales pitch. Who does not want to be pretty and smart? Noxema daily cleanser is the product being sold in this advertisement. Noxema also carries a variety of other products in this line that claim to help women pull off the perfect glow no matter what lifestyle they live. The opening statement on Noxema’s website says Beauty’s Never Looked So Smart. This all seems to be promoting strong, healthy, clean, independent women. They are a product line underneath the parent company, P&G (Procter & Gamble). They produce many cleaning products, along with cosmetics, and many other product lines mostly dealing with the house and home and directed toward female consumers. Their slogan is Everyday Solutions. The company has an entire Company’s Purpose, Values, and Principles section to read on the webpage. However, Noxzema recently released and advertisement that struck at these values. The advertisement brings up many social issues in advertising today, such as the idea of No means Yes, street harassment is acceptable, promotes sexual violence, need for external validation, promotes an unattainable standard of physical beauty, and finally promotes stereo types toward construction workers.
The article at first glance seems harmless. It is colored in a variety of blue values with interesting patterns that mimic the package design or bottle of Noxema. The title line is written in a bright white in a trendy but almost hand written typeface to give it a human quality that reads, “Wash., Get noticed Pretend to be annoyed, Repeat.”. Down from that there is a stylish little cartoon charter walking in front of a construction hoarse and a little diamond sign stating “Construction Area”. This is all in proportion the bottle of daily cleanser to the right. At the bottom there is Noxema’s tag line of “Noxema, Pretty Smart.” Once visiting the website for Noxzema I realized that this look and feel had been taken across the board. Then one can discoverer there is more to the little cartoon character in the advertisement. She has an actual profile under in a link called “meet the girls” under a menu called “girl talk”. The girls are Zoe (The Style-Savvy Teacher), the one in out ad, Monique (The Aspiring Actress), and Brigid (The Sassy Dancing Queen). This was great instead of hiring celebrities to sell their product they created their own characters that have different personality treats to related to a large group of their target market (young stylish females). This was truly a great step in creating an identity for the product and helping the consumer relate and attract interest.
Even though this seems to be promoting strong independent women it is actually sending many of the exact opposite messages. First, this clearly sends out the statement that, No really means Yes, with its underlining idea that women actually enjoy being harassed. Women complain about sexual harassment and are offended, but deep down inside they really want it. This is a dangerous message that often leads to violence against women, and street harassment is not a joke. Many times such instances are both frightening and humiliating for the women involved. In fact there are many feminist groups that are organized specifically to stop this type of hateful activity. The message being sent is dangerous because it can be clearly tied to sexual violence toward women. Every day four women die in this country as a result of domestic violence, and every two minutes a woman is raped. These numbers have never existed for men. It teaches that men do not have boundaries when it comes to how they interact around women, so they think the have free roam to say and do what they want without consequences. This can lead to many damaging effects such as loss of self-esteem and hatred toward people in the position of the harasser.(New Moon News) The title also sends a clear message that in order to feel beautiful or sexy as women you need to hear it from a howling group of construction workers or other male validations. Further more that street harassment is the prize one wins for putting time and care into how one looks. This is a recurring theme throughout many cosmetic advertisements like if you can look and smell and act like the girl in the advertisement that you win get a guy. Ideas such as these only feed and reflect the shallowness of our society and its male dominancy. Once one gets past the headline the can notice the unrealistic image portrayed by the cartoon character that makes the beauty ideal even more prevalent. The character is trendy with all the right clothes and her nice like purse, but her body is literally toothpick thin with legs that are two thirds of her body leading up into her tinny mini skirt. This is once again they typical unattainable body image projected by the media and in all other areas of women’s lives. NAME may have said it best,
“Starting in childhood with dolls like Barbie, women and girls in the United States are bombarded with images showing what they should look like and how to achieve this look. Movies, TV programs, posters, billboards, magazine articles, and ads all portray images of the “Ideal” women. She is young and tall, with long legs, small breasts and hops, smooth skin, and well-groomed hair. Her body is trim, toned, and very lean. In some years, cleavage is the desired trait; in others, it may be fuller hips; but the basic formula holds.” (Kirk 112)
One could not think of a more perfect person or character to fit this ideal than Monique (The Aspiring Actress) herself. Low and behold she is selling a product that supports clean skin. Noxema has taken this ideal a step further in creating personalities that are talented and independent along with the looks. Last but not least this advertisement helps promote negative stereotypes toward men through its use of harassment theme and construction equipment. It focuses on physical laborers often portrayed as men of lower intelligence and calls out construction works. Like any situation even though this is how these men have been portrayed in the media for years, it is not the truth. Being a construction worker takes a lot of hard work and dedication and it is not fair to generalize all the fine men and women that work in such fields. This advertising campaign tries to make its consumers feel like they are invited to and all girls club, but instead promotes many of the negative messages women are confronting in the media. It leads on the idea that when women say No they really mean Yes, An idea that can be clearly traced back to violence against women. Also it makes a joke out of street harassment, when it can clearly have emotionally damaging results They “beauty ideal” imposed on women for decades have not been escaped by Noxema’s cute little cartoon characters. They still hold all the unattainable physical characteristics as the supermodels in other ads. Finally, push more unfair stereotypes onto male construction workers.

Works Cited
Kirk, Gwyn. Women 's Lives Multicultural Perspectives. NY: Mc Graw Hill, 2004.
"Street Harasment is a Crime." New Moon News. 2007. Mar. 2008 <http://newmoonnews.blogspot.com/2007/07/street-harassment-is-crime.html>.

Cited: Kirk, Gwyn. Women 's Lives Multicultural Perspectives. NY: Mc Graw Hill, 2004. "Street Harasment is a Crime." New Moon News. 2007. Mar. 2008 <http://newmoonnews.blogspot.com/2007/07/street-harassment-is-crime.html>.