Women in Media !!! What part of her are we selling ?

As I was window shopping, eating, jogging and even studying today, I could not help but notice that 90% of all the ads have nothing to do with the products being advertised for. They all use female's sexuality to grab attention! Made me wonder if it was the product they are selling or the promotion of an unattainable airbrushed beauty where the less you wear, the more glamourous you look.

At first I thought the conservative part of me was just being uptight and I will not deny that the green-eyed monster was mocking my buried feminine side that somehow desired to have a diva pose. Hold your imagination right there, not even the greed-eyed monster would make me desire the -naked and overexposed babe- pose. After all, Pamela Anderson is not my definition for glamourous.

Unfortunately displaying sexy or even erotic ads does indeed attract more customers. And ultimately a lot would argue that having broad shouldered, narrow hipped beauties with/or highly endowed breasts on ads is rather a smart marketing technique. Hence the -or- because sometimes highly endowed breasts is all that you see in an ad.

However, some would argue that those ads are NOTHING but mere materialization of fantastic conjunction of nudity and art that uptight conservatives like me could not possibly appreciate.

But if sexual provocative ads is yet another form of art then why is it that we never see males in such positions. They are never integrated with alcohol or chocolate objects like women are in the following ads. It breaks my heart when women themselves become the objects marketers are trying to sell.

Even when males are abused in ads, their sexual organs are never the theme of the ad. That is not to say that I want the same form of abuse to happen to men. If anything that would just encourage marketing beasts to feed on objectifing human bodies.

You can see that the devil's advocate attitude did not last for long, especially not after seeing the ads that literally exploit females as objects. It is like marketing has been universally themed and the theme is “Degrading Women” .

I can totally see lectures under the titles of “The use of Breasts and Legs in Selling”, “Getting your products to drool guys” taught in marketing workshops or business companies.

Not only do commercials exploit women to sell products but they all seem to promote violence, harassment, rape, and in some cases gang rape.

In an old ad for Dolce and Gabana that has already been banned in Spain, a woman is displayed as she's being pulled by her wrists to the ground while a group of men look on. For more on Spain's position refer to

I couldn't even post some of American's Apparel ads for fear of being accused with posting child pornographic articles.

In a matter of fact, finding provocative ads didn't even require adding the keyword "provocative" or "offensive". All that I typed in was "women ads" in Google and the screen shot below shows the sad result.

Women lying on floor has become the norm in the marketing industry. So not only are ads committing public crimes, but people no longer recognize these crimes. Violence, passive and active harassment are literally disguising behind labels like "Females' Liberty", "Smart Marketing" and "Art".

The first image and also the largest displays yet another lady lying on the floor below a man who seems to carry 2 glasses in one hand and the advertised alcohol in the other. And I don't think it would take a rocket scientist to figure out that the man is in a superior position and that she is either vulnerable or indifferent. It can be inferred that she has no option but to have the drinks with him.

Now away from all this pessimism, the world still has good people. One of the ads displayed below is Dove's ad for the Real Beauty Campaign which in my personal opinion is big step towards ethical socially responsible marketing.

Finally, even if we were to forget about women rights or even human rights. We should at least give a damn about displaying rated images publicly in the streets. Uncensored images for young models are always shown in suggestive positions and unlike your TV where you get to control what you see, you have no control over what you or your children are exposed to from extremely large racy billboards like the ones below.

Though Calvin Klein's 5 stories ad shown below is rather old, newer billboards are not all that different. If anything, billboards are even racier nowadays.

My rant can go forever about objectifying, humiliating and offensive ads but I think you get the point. Those ads sell more than just products as they sell values to our daughters. And if I were to sum up a lady's mission being inferred from these ads in a statement it would be:

"To seduce and please more men by looking young, vulnerable, sexy, and unnaturally beautiful at all times. Fabric doesn't always serve you and none is even better."

And the values would be:

1- Vulnerability - use your sexual power instead of your brains

2- Speechlessness - impress others with your looks not words

3- Pleasing- please others using your image even if it meant putting your health in risk

Unfortunately objectification of women is not just exclusive to ads or billboards. It is a scary phenomena found in media in general. Be it songs, tv shows, video games, or online ads.

Please take in consideration that I do not view men as oppressors for most of these pictures were taken by choice. Besides due to a lot of factors including the sexualized culture, women themselves are viewing objectification as a form of empowerment.

In conclusion, I realize that this is a heated topic and a lot of you especially guys will have different point of views thus I am looking forward to read your comments.