Another blog written in
Minnesota: I didn't plan to talk about television advertising again, but I saw
yet another commercial that has me irritated over the portrayal of women. My
college major was advertising and I understand why women are used in ads for
products aimed at men. The problem is how women are portrayed.
The latest example is a
commercial for Armor All. A man comes out in a bathrobe because he hears noises
in his garage. A Viking-like male is in there and he's holding a box of Armor
All products. The first man admits that the product was a gift from his brother
and the Viking guy says he doesn't deserve it or the car (that's covered in
dirt). So far, it's fine.
Then comes the part that I
didn't like: a scantily clad woman prances out (and I use the word prances
deliberately), looks at the guy she's sleeping with, looks at the Viking, and
as the Viking leaves, she prances after him.
Really? Really Armor All? Women
are so brainless and fickle that they'll follow some strange man dressed up
like a Viking because he's got a clean car?
The number one offender in my
opinion is Axe personal care products for men. They're the ones who had a
commercial where a man was portrayed as his hair style and the woman as a pair
of breasts. That was downright offensive.
Their latest campaign for their
Apollo line features a woman in jeopardy (fire, shark attack). She's rescued by
a man (firefighter, lifeguard) and instead of thanking him, she spots a man who
uses Apollo products and brushes past the man who saved her because Women love astronauts.
I don't have a problem with the
saving part; I consider that a legitimate ploy for the ads. What bothers me is
the subtle message being transmitted by the way the women are portrayed. It's
not just Axe. It's not just Armor All. It's a message being sent in a number of
ads to young men and women who watch television and it's not a positive
message.
I'm not naïve. I know women have
been portrayed as objects in advertising for a long time, but there's something
different about the current trend. It's not just that it's 2013 and we should
be beyond this—although one would hope we, as a society, would have grown up a
bit more than we have—it's the idea that women are that brainless. I hate using
the same word over and over, but it fits the scenario. They're like Stepford
women, nothing more than robots to satisfy males.
When I was in advertising ethics
class in college, we looked at using sex (and women) to sell products. We
examined print ads, which granted are different than television commercials,
but I think it will sort of illustrate the difference in how women were used
back then as compared to how they're used now. (Heavy emphasis on the word used.)
The one ad that really sticks in
my memory was for liquor. We see a man and a woman alone in an upscale living
room. He's in a suit, she's wearing a black dress that's sexy, but wasn't so
revealing that a woman in real life wouldn't wear it out for an evening with
her guy. The models are sharing a drink and a suggestive look. In the corner of
the ad was a bottle of the liquor being advertised and a glass with ice cubes. The
ice cubes definitely had a phallic arrangement, but that would be something
picked up subliminally. Most people wouldn't look at a print ad long enough to
notice it consciously.
In the liquor ad, the couple are
portrayed as equals. They're both interested in each other—it's a choice
they're both making.
In the TV ads today, women are
not equals. Women aren't even portrayed as people in the Armor All and Axe
commercials. Women are merely objects for the man to take or not take as he
wishes.
I've been trying and trying to
remember if this brainless, Stepford portrayal of women has been around and I
just hadn't paid attention, but I don't think so. I tend to study ads and
notice nuances and trends because I got used to doing this while I was in
school. This seems to have popped up within the last five years or so and it
doesn't seem to be abating, not when the Armor All commercial really didn't
need a woman in it at all to get the message across, but they put one in
anyway.
Why do I think this is happening?
Leaving the larger societal issues for the professionals, I'll speculate that
it's laziness on the part of the advertising community. Sex sells, but instead
of being subtle about it—which takes some time and cleverness on the part of
the copywriters—let's just throw it out there because that's easier.
This lack of subtlety is
something I've seen across a broad swath of commercials, not only the portrayal
of women as sex objects. Ads have hooks. When I was trained, the copywriter
tried to camouflage the hook with a carefully wrapped worm. Now, the ads like
maybe try to yank a worm on the hook, but don't do a very good job with that.
In fact, I've wondered for a while if viewers don't notice the tactics
advertisers are using to reel them in or if the advertisers just don't care if
their target market sees their hook.
Whatever the reason, though,
this portrayal of women needs to change. There's a big, big difference between
using a woman's sex appeal to sell products to men and objectifying women so
that they're nothing except sexy brainless robots. I've had enough of the
Stepford women.
