Sociology of Advertising and The Stereotyping of Women in...

The Stereotyping of Women in the Media: Gender Roles, Personal Dissatisfaction and Issues of Patriarchy- Who Is Really to Blame? We live in a consumer world. Everything we do and perhaps everything we are is based on consumption and commodity. Daily life has become a constant juggle of products and services - needs verses wants. People and objects become interchangeable. People become identified and classified with material goods. While advertising and the consequential high levels of consumption are juxtaposed and allied to economic expansion, they are also coupled with personal dissatisfaction, the commoditization of culture, the decline of public and family life, the destruction of true and meaningful human relationships, and the†¦show more content†¦Consumer advertising propels an unviable ideal of the feminine figure. The vast majority of advertising uses a feminine form whose key features (e.g. thinness, particular figure, unblemished complexion) that are incomparable to most real women s bodies. This can create misleading expectations on the part of women and of society at large. The depiction of females in advertising is also highly stylized and this can significantly distort its viewers connection between what they see in the advertisement and what women actually experience and accomplish in reality. Advertising negatively objectifies women. Much advertising involving female models is semi-pornographic. It conforms to a misogynist assessment that women are commodifiable sexual objects that are both disposable and transposable. Most advertising also uses models with a fairly homogenous set of physical characteristics and styles them so that they are often interchangeable which alludes to the idea that all women are the same while using a subject with realistically unattainable attributes. This approach gives emphasis to the idea of women as essentially compliant, commodifiable items. Some advertising even uses an almost childlike interpretation of women which plays to a mild form of pedophilia on the pretext of advertising. As well as debasing