How many advertisements were you bombarded with today? And how many of them did you pay conscious attention to? Over the last few decades the average number of ads we see per day has increased exponentially, with the increased availability of media and technology. Everywhere you look, there’s somehow wanting to sell something to you, in spite of your interests. With the increased number of ads and increased amounts of choice, the marketers are competing for your attention. Yes, yours! One of their best tricks is to use a highly sexualized subject or an object for this task and we the consumers constantly fall prey to the tactic. When was the last time you looked at an ad once more, this time consciously, just to look at the girl in the ad who was so damn hot?
You might be wondering what is so wrong with someone, a woman, being super attractive. Nope, that’s not the problem at all. The problem is when the human being in the woman is stripped away, depicting her as a mere object. When women’s bodies are represented as only an instrument of pleasure, you have transformed the woman from being a subject to an object (Note the difference: an object is passive and can be acted upon by a subject, a subject has agency). And it’s no news that a hugely increased number of ads do just this! The range of ads objectifying women includes selling products such as beer and underwear, to selling beauty to selling of ideas such as the importance of being a vegetarian or preventing breast cancer!
The scariest bit however is that ads don’t even need your attention. Many ads rely on the effects of unconscious exposure to sell their products to the over-scheduled, cognitively overloaded, and a mentally exhausted population. Most ads rely on the unconscious association between the product sold and the pleasant feelings evoked through the advertisement. Hence, the use of feel good music and people as sex objects. It seems we as a culture are attracted to both! Even though men are also increasingly objectified in media, it is still greatly less compared to women. The gap between who gets objectified still remains.
What is most important to realize is immediate arousal and slightly probable buying of the product are not the only consequences of these ads. The effects of conscious or unconscious priming contribute more to creating the mind of society than it does to selling the products. How many of the stuff you see in ads, do you actually buy?
The effects they leave on society however are long term and damaging. We will explore these ideas further in the upcoming posts!
She Is Not A Thing 