Our mission is to educate men and women, making them more aware and alert when consuming media messages. We are specifically focused on media messages which objectify women and thus make women feel badly about themselves both physically and psychologically. We hope to expose the truth about what it means to be a real, beautiful woman.
Skyy Vodka has numerous more highly sexual based advertisements besides the ones featured here. How do these pictures make you feel while viewing them? What does it say to you about their product? Is the product making false claims? Do you believe these advertisements are directed at men, women, or both.
Remember, there are no right answers to any of these questions. They are for discussion purposes.
Relate Magazine of St. Louis has allowed us to submit a few articles to them from our project this semester. They have published some of our content for us to help us reach a larger audience. Thanks Relate Mag staff for all of your help with our media literacy project!
Check out their website, here are a few of our articles:
Heidi Klum, as a spokesperson for Jordache Jeans, has demonstrated power for women in Jordache’s advertisements. Unfortunately, this power is a sexualized power, which is hardly empowering. In both of these ads, Klum poses topless with her blonde hair draped over her breasts, tightly gripping a whip in her fashionable jeans. We see her sultry eyes, her tussled hair, and her gorgeous figure standing over a city and this tells a woman that’s all you need. Women can rule the world with a hot body and a whip, not intelligence, not a giving heart, not hard work.
Is this dominatrix kind of woman one women desire to be? One women want men to see them as? Is this the kind of power we have at home? In our workplaces? At school? After all the years of lobbying for women’s rights, is this really the only power women have gained?
For years, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has had the advertisement campaign “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” featuring models and celebrities baring it all for the proper treatment of animals. Does using women as sexual objects for a good cause make it okay? Who is PETA trying to direct these advertisements at and do you believe it’s effective? Should PETA change anything about this advertisement campaign?
Other things to think about while viewing PETA’s advertisements featuring nude women: Does this change your opinion on PETA or the celebrity in subject? Is there another way to get their point across than featuring women naked? Why do you think PETA decided to take this approach?
An obsession with the process of aging is becoming more and more prevalent in America. We have twenty year olds starting to use anti-wrinkle cream in order to start early in preventing their skin from showing signs of age. Middle aged and older women are getting plastic surgery, microderm abrasion, and Botox to try and look as young as possible. Ellen’s opening statement in her Cover Girl Simply Ageless commercial “Inner beauty is important, but not nearly as important as outer beauty” has become an anthem for American women. We associate getting older with being less beautiful, even having less value and advertisements like this reinforce that mentality.
Ultimately, our makeup and anti-aging preferences aren’t going to keep us young, make us who we are, define our relationships, change a life, or make us truly happy. So, why do we stress so much about our age, our wrinkles, our makeup, and clothes? Outer beauty may make us feel more comfortable and confident, but it’s fleeting. Inner beauty is what is more important; it’s things like being a friend, loving your family, enjoying your surroundings, sharing knowledge, and looking back on memories.
Maybe we should spend less time scrutinizing ourselves for the way our faces and body change as we age, and look at it as how much we have experienced and loved our lives. How would our lives be impacted if we saw fewer media telling us how much we need to change who we already are? What do you think advertiser’s motives are in telling us things like this? Do you think they might be effected by it too?
Playtex has different advertisements currently being broadcasted where average women are being displayed in little clothing and a Playtex bra. In your opinion, is this empowering to you to see normal sized women talking about their different sizes and shapes of their breast? Is it still making women appear as sexual objects? Would the campaign be perceived differently if all the women had fit bodies? Do you think that Playtex has changed the ideal of what is beautiful and acceptable by having normal sized women in their ads?
Women and girls of all ages have immense pressure to conform and be the perfect ideal of beauty. Is there anything wrong with being uniquely beautiful? The media forces these ideals of perfection onto society that results in celebrities transforming their image and in turn pushing that belief towards their fans.
Some questions to think about: How does it make you feel that women and girls can’t feel comfortable in their own skin because they aren’t prefect in the media’s eyes? Why do women and girls feel they have to look like everyone else? Why is being perfect such necessity?
Our bloggers will make blog posts every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdayuntil December 8, 2009. We encourage everyone to become a follower and check back frequently.
We are a group of media savvy women who want to share our questions, thoughts, and insights with you, our readers, concerning women in advertising and body image effects.
Throughout our daily lives, we are constantly bombarded with advertisements that display women as objects. Whether we're objects for sex or merely just for viewing pleasure, this kind of media is effecting how we as women feel about ourselves. We want to get you thinking about what advertisers are suggesting, what that is saying about our culture, and most importantly what you can do about it in your own lives.
We hope that you enjoy our blogs, photos, and videos, and we hope that you will get involved in discussing these issues with us as well as those around you.
We are citing the Fair Use and Practices Clause for the photos, videos, advertisements, commercials, etc used. http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
Skyy Vodka has numerous more highly sexual based advertisements besides the ones featured here. How do these pictures make you feel while viewing them? What does it say to you about their product? Is the product making false claims? Do you believe these advertisements are directed at men, women, or both.
