Written by: Imran Younus
Advertising is actually the promotion and presentation of products, goods or services by different producers in such a way that is understandable by the viewers and developed an urge among the viewers to buy such product, good or service. Advertisers use various different media for their campaigns such as print media including newspapers and magazines and electronic media, etc. In this regard they also use several strategies to create a desire for their product among consumers. But it is widely seen from the last century and the rate is increasing day by day so far that women are objectified and used for such campaigns more commonly than men. Not only to this extent, but women are objectified in a sexual way to make an advertisement more appealing.
This article is all about the question that usually ranging in our minds that are women empowered through advertisements or degraded? In ads that are made these days women are depicted not as a human. They are usually seen as creation of industry, overwhelmed with perfection which is usually by using technique of Photoshop. The advertisements’ main function is to generate a need and then provide something to fill that need. The main tactic the organizations use to sell their product is to depict the woman as nude or semi-nude. So, is it the ethical way? Or women are empowered by showing them in over sexualized positions? The powerful selling point which is used by the advertisers to attract the attention of males and females is sex. As an essential survival instinct, it has strong mark over human brains.
To sell sex is the heartrending reality that advertisers use these days and to sell their product, they degrade women to a greater extent. If the sex is being sold, then we would probably see sexual content of both genders but in actual we don’t but more often we see women as an objectification of sex. Women are now used as key element in advertisements for highlighting sexual content. Sex appeal becomes the most profitable and mandatory strategy in advertisements these days which appeal both men and women, i.e. it appeals men who are attracted to women with over sexualized characters and to women who have an urge to look like such women.
After having more closer look to the advertisements, it is seen that women are not only degraded in terms of treating as sex object but also presented in the form of an ideal object, which not even exist but just portrayed to seek the attention of customers especially females to urge them to be like that ideal object by using their product. The features of that ideal woman are:
When we are flipping the page of magazine and suddenly our gaze caught an advertisement, which is related to shaving kit of man, but it has semi-naked picture of woman, for which a man is aroused and want to play with that woman. What do we think first? Do we see such woman as sexual object or as a woman? Obviously, she is seen as sexual object, which every man demands and wants to play with that object. What do we call it empowering or degrading? If we call it degrading, then the question here arises that if women don’t like to be degraded then why they buy such products. So, verily the advertisers play with their dreams and emotions. Every woman in this world want to look beautiful and fantasy has attraction in its own. In the world of today, with intense busy life and work pressure, fantasy gives comfort to the people. People like to live more in imagination then to accept the utter reality. So when the look the woman in advertisements who is so very ideal they start to make dreams and desire to be like such woman and in such way buy that products to achieve their dreams. Advertisements have direct pscyological effect to the deamand of such product. They actually play with the insecurities of women about themselves. They want to be the woman, which every man wants. But being blindfolded they not even think for a while that such imagery of woman is a result photoshop, which exists only in fantasy and in real life no one can be like such.
After being victim of constant sexual objectification, women become more self-consciousness and have lack of self-confidence in them. This leads to anxiety disorders in them. It also resulted in continuous discontentment of women for their bodies resulting in the continuous struggle to achieve those beauty standards. Initially women are contended with this continuous attention but gradually it leads to depression because the society then starts to treat them as a sex toy. Therefore, the simple answer to all this content is our media never empowered the women. Women are always degraded. Media just trapped and imbecile women that it empowered her. But after a very short time the reality revealed and leads to the sickening situation of the society. To cope with this severe situation of sexual objectification of women in media there is a dire need to reschedule this scheme of media. Society must eradicate this ideal beauty standard so that every woman can walk through the proud on herself and have self-confidence on whatever the body features she has. She must believe in one thing that she is perfect in her imperfections. Only by this way this adverse situation can be ended.
