How Advertisements Shape Perception : Objectification?

March 24, 2017

In today’s world where everything is available to us within milliseconds, with data waiting to be distributed only about a mouse click away, it is very difficult to determine which section of this information holds credibility in terms of the ‘ideal’ way of working of things. Advertising is one of the largest industry for promotion of businesses and ideas often gets treated as the epitome of legitimacy. When one holds a newspaper in hand or a TV remote to connect to what’s going on in the world, there lies a  subconscious filter in their minds that this platform sharing this knowledge with the viewer must be backed up with facts and should be true. Dearly holding this assumption in mind, one tends to take the ideals projected in the media forward,  and desire certain images portrayed for themselves, eliminating the chance of the same set of imagery and ideas to be inaccurate.

“Advertising adds value to a product by changing our perception, rather than the product itself,” says Rory Sutherland, and is agreeable because ultimately, Advertisements sell more than products do. Their effect on people is quick, cumulative, and sub-conscious. A study conducted proved that children as young as two years old can recognize two-thirds of popular brand logos. That is the extent of the power this industry holds. What gets represented on these platforms for the mere purpose of selling a product, affects the buyers at a subconscious level just by looking at what is expected to be ‘ideal’, even though that may not be the intention. It does affect the consumer’s buying choices regardless. But not just that, people as individuals look up to those benchmarks and try to attain them for themselves.

“Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of women in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she  turns into an object- and most particularly an object of vision.” (John Berger, Ways of Seeing) Here, John Berger takes on the basic perception of women, the way they are looked at and treated inanimately, as objects. They are expected to be graceful and submissive so that men would like them better. This idea has been passing over from generation to generation and has built a  mindset among women which synchronizes with what the men want. There is a sense of conditioning in their way of thinking,  where they see themselves as objects meant to please the desires of the other gender.

One of the biggest benefits of this disparity between the two genders are advertisements that use people to represent their product. And in doing so, they either end up losing the point of their advertisement- until towards the end the brand name is shown; or they portray their subjects on-screen as pawns, whose images they manipulate over software like Photoshop so much that the real person can’t be recognized. “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford”, says Cindy Crawford herself, in a popular interview. The extent of these forces is so vast that flaws are considered inhuman.

Most beauty products ever advertised have been alienating the chances of blemishes. They are represented by models having the ‘perfect’ body; young, thin, tall, and beautiful, with long necks and fair skin. Accompanied by these sometimes are their heads being bigger than their pelvises, which is biologically impossible to attain.

These stereotypical images of women, represented with the intent to endorse their product have much larger effects than just that on the audiences. People from all age groups measure themselves against those images every single day and go to great lengths to earn these features. They too see their bodies as objects and affect their self-esteem; insulting and dismembering their bodies in the process.

Some advertisements, such as Axe deodorants or Levis Jeans are focused entirely on the explicitly of the body- focussing on parts of the body while the head stays out of the frame; the identity and connection to the personality of the person shown are lost. The purpose of the advertisement is very hard to find. What is left of them is an object, which presumably can be grabbed, bought, used, and thrown. It makes the viewers uncomfortable. “Somehow, it is okay to be uncomfortable than being disrespected”, says Natalia Ortiz Hazarian in her TEDx talk.

Instead of convincing the audiences to buy their product, they seem to blackmail them of the effects of not using their product.  For instance- the following deodorant ad. One, as they talk about her facial features being ‘good enough’, they target her odor. Two, they say, in these same words, “But these charms may be wasted if she uses the WRONG DEODORANT”.  It brings the viewer to question their choices, their body odor, making them uncomfortable about their true selves.

There are so many more examples of looking at skinny as the perfect body type, inspired majorly by advertisements endorsing beauty, health, and fitness that it has brainwashed people of the idea of health also lying in other body types.  Not all skinny people are healthy, and not all healthy people are skinny.

Stereotypical taglines highlighting a ‘caring mother’, a ‘loving grandmother’ a ‘gentle wife’ are all targeted towards women when these words hold qualities every gender can have. But somehow, women are made to stand and represent these stereotypes that can always fit for everyone.

Large brands have so much power to influence and affect so many people, it often gets misused. These tactics to publicize their product and up their sales have been taking rounds of the media for a long time now, so long that looking at this explicit has made us indifferent to the effects it takes on young kids as well.

Men, too are objectified in advertisements. Only with a buffed up built and six-pack abs are they seen as the top-notch  ‘hunk’. However,  men stereotypes are less personal, less related to the body, and happen to have fewer consequences because women are more prone to being sexually harassed. Women live in the possibility of rapes and intimidation in a  world defined by that threat.

Inspired by the following resources:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/22393.Naomi_Wolf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy8yLaoWybk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=askcLEVCTko

Body and Context Studio, Srishti