Stereotypes In Advertising

In the year 1999, $120 billion was spent on marketing products to consumers (Killing Us Softly 3). Along with products, the advertising industry sells the intangible: "Ads sell a great deal more than products. They sell values, images, and concepts of success of worth, love and sexuality, popularity, and normalcy. They tell us who we are and who we should be. Sometimes they sell addictions" (Kilbourne, Beauty and the Beast). When the average person is bombarded by 2,000-3,000 ads a day (Kilbourne, address), it is impossible to remain unaffected by the aforementioned concepts and stereotypes (Still Killing Us Softly, video). Ads use insecurities to promise betterment with the purchase of a certain product. They are breeding grounds
They have distorted the image of the female body type and beauty. Rudman, a columnist for Women and Health, said in a 1993 article, "Media definitions of sexual attractiveness promote either extreme thinness or a thin waist with large hips and breasts." The problem with this image is that it is impossible for most women to attain. The body types of models are completely genetic: tall and very thin, and the only way models maintain a C or D cup is by implants (Killing Us Softly 3). Because of the image of thinness that permeates the advertising industry, 80% of women think they are overweight. In reality only about 58% of American women are overweight or obese (Still Killing Us Softly). The worry about weight has begun at a very young age in the past years. Studies have shown that 31 percent of 10-year-old girls are afraid of being fat. The discontent with self-image can often lead to dieting, and dieting can easily lead to eating disorders. Even fourth graders are going on diets (Geidrys). It is estimated that about 7 million women in America have an eating disorder, and that 86% of eating disorders appear before the victim turns 20 (Thomas). There are websites that support anorexia and bulimia as "lifestyles"; something they can turn off and on at will (Thomas). Lauren Solotar, vice president of clinical services and operations at the May Institute of Walpole, Massachusetts, counters this mindset. She says,
A quote from an editorial in the magazine Advertising Age, a magazine made for advertisers, reads as such: "Clearly it's time to wipe out sexism in beer ads; for the brewers and their agencies to wake up and join the rest of America in realizing that sexism, sexual harassment, and the cultural portrayal of women in advertising are inextricably linked (Killing Us Softly 3)." Clearly this is not something that advertisers are not aware of. Why then, has it not changed? As well as ads that encourage sexism in general, there are also quite a few ads that portray violence in a twisted plan to gain attention for their product; for example, a woman with a bloody nose seen in fig. 4, or such as a woman with a cut on her face and a belt wrapped around her head in fig. 5. There are many other ads like this, and many that are worse; in one ad there was a woman's body in a morgue with the words "uh-oh" written on her forehead. Another showed a woman sprawled on the pavement, one shoe missing, and blood pouring from the back of her head. Images such as this, if showing an animal instead of a woman, would have many animal rights activists up in arms. Why is it that these ads don't get an even more drastic