During the last 100
years, women have gotten more rights and recognition they deserved for hundreds
if not thousands of years. Yet for all the progress we have made, women are
still looked not as the women they are, but as objects to be treated as
whatever men want them to be at that specific time. During both of the world
wars, women were asked to take men’s jobs while they went off to fight
ideological wars, they were to be strong and independent, ready to do whatever
job needed to be done. But when the wars ended and the men came back home,
instead of being Rosie the Riveter, they were to do what was necessary at home.
[What's the difference between being useful at home or at work if both end in the satisfaction for men?]
Ads have been used to
control women for decades if not longer. Even during the Second World War, they
have never been in control. Instead of working for their man at home, they were
working in the factory for the man away. What’s the difference if I asked a
woman to go to the kitchen and make me a sandwich and asking her to go to a
factory and make me a shirt? “
Today ads are used to
make women conform to a certain image for men to enjoy. But, as Isaac Newton’s
third law states, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Many women look at these ads and do not see the beautiful illusion in front of
them. Instead, it makes them look at themselves as ugly and incomplete, driving
them to try to become the heavily modified image directed towards them. Health
problems and throwing money at cosmetics are only a small handful of the things
women do to get close to the “perfect” image given to them by advertisements,
but like the speed of light, the closer she gets the more impossible it becomes.
Compared to the male who sits in front of the image and does nothing but
continue to observe the woman inside as if she’s already in his grasp. “Women
watch themselves being looked at…… The surveyor of women in herself is male:
the surveyed female. This she turns herself into an object – and most
particularly an object of vision: a sight.”(47, Berger) The fantasy image in the ad is real and he
already owns it.
The woman continues to
work towards the beauty constructed, and the man reaps all the rewards. What
control does she truly have anyways? She gets nothing if she is beautiful and
if she isn’t she is ridiculed for it. Advertisements are not just for men to
gaze at, it is a gaze from men used to control women. “The aspect of
advertising most need of analysis and change is the portrayal of women.
Scientific studies and the most casual viewing yield the same conclusion” Women
are shown almost exclusively as house wives or sex objects.” (122 Kilbourne)
Again, to be either the housewife who caters to the every need of the
husband/man or she becomes an objects for men to desire her beauty. There is
little to no advertising where the woman takes control of her own life or even,
dare I say of a man.
We’re not talking about
fake imaginary control, we’re talking actually controlling what women can and
can’t do. It’s gotten to the point where there are still certain parts of the
country where women are not allowed to have abortions. To tell a woman that she
must force herself to gestate a baby she doesn’t even want and then force
herself to actually birth the damn thing is incredibly inhumane, then to force
them to raise a child they don’t care for and may not have the resources to do
so makes it unfair to the child as well. “What often goes unspoken in this conversation
is how debates about birth control and reproductive freedom continually force
the female body into being a legislative matter because men refuse to assume
their fair share of responsibility for birth control. Men refuse to allow their
bodies to become a legislative matter because they have that inalienable right.”
(276 Gay) If women must be subjected to laws concerning her reproductive organs
why can men not be as well?
Image Sources
http://rasujilani.com/post/3484224028/anti-abortion
http://www.cosmopolitan.com/style-beauty/fashion/news/a38711/lane-bryant-calls-out-victorias-secret-in-new-campaign/
http://thoughtcatalog.com/nico-lang/2013/09/these-45-shockingly-sexist-vintage-ads-will-make-you-glad-to-live-in-2013/
Works Cited
Beauty and the Beast of Advertising - Jean Kilbourne
Bad Feminist - Roxane Gay
Ways of Seeing - John Berger
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