Sexy Advertisements

This is one of the many sexist ads that were published during the recent World Cup 2010.

Source: campaignme.com

The ads above is part a campaign that plays on women’s perceived cluelessness about football, which the agency hopes will help Le Mall avoid the usual World Cup advertising clutter (Akerman 2010). Another sports season that is full of sexist ads is the SuperBowl.

SuperBowl ads are the most expensive on television, costing millions of dollars (Fredrix 2010). It contains a flurry of sexist ads with themes that varies from the popular ‘women as sex symbols’ to ‘men are stupid’.

There is usually a lot of hype and objections about ads that put a bad image on women, but not a lot is given to the ads that demoralize men. The types of advertisements that are sexist towards men are usually the ones that depict men as stupid, lazy, incompetent, or even as sex symbols.

According to Peele (2010), the impact of these ads is to give license to people - including their children - to regard and treat adult males as imbeciles.

Sweney (2009) talks about a TV campaign, for an oven cleaner called Oven Pride that was accused of implying that cleaning is women's work and that men are "stupid and lazy" when it comes to housework. He explained that most argued that the ad suggested men were "stupid and lazy" and was therefore sexist and offensive. While, the ad also suggested that cleaning was "generally a woman's job" and was therefore offensive and demeaning to women. Therefore, it seem the ad had negative depictions of both the sexes.

Below is a video that seems to encompass sexist advertising for both parties:

The most popular type of sexist adverting against women always depicts sex. Why? This is simply because sex sells. And according to Origin (2010), because usually people don't care about the product or service at first, they only care about seeing more pictures of the beautiful model in the advertisement.

Perera (2010) says that, we've largely come to accept these images as part of the landscape of modern life, images women may resent or feel intimidated by in silence but which we also fear will leave us accused of over-reaction if we voice our concerns in public.

Therefore, if we want to these types of advertisements to stop, then we simply need to make our opinion known.

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References

Akerman, I 2010, Le Mall – Take her to the game, Campaign Middle East, viewed 13 November 2010, <http://campaignme.com/2010/06/20/1208/le-mall-%E2%80%93-take-her-to-the-game/>.

Fredrix, E 2010, Super Bowl Ad Prices Fall; Still Most Expensive, ABC News, viewed 13 November 2010, <http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory?id=9529306>.

Sweney, M 2009, Oven-cleaner ad cleared of sexism, guardian.co.uk, viewed 14 November 2010, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/20/asa-oven-pride-cleared-of-sexism>.

Peele, S 2009, ‘Buttheaditis - The Demoralization of the American Male,’ Addiction in Society, 25 January, viewed 14 November 2010, < http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/addiction-in-society/201001/buttheaditis-the-demoralization-the-american-male>.

Perera,K 2010, Time to kick sexism out of advertising, guardian.co.uk, viewed 9
November 2010, < http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/29/kick-sexism-out-of-advertising>.

Origins 2010, ‘Sex Sells: Advertising Study,’ HubPages, 15 April, viewed 14 November 2010, <http://hubpages.com/hub/Sex-Sells-Advertising-Study>.