The publicity of a product is meant to portray the advantages of patronizing a particular product, and sometimes, the disadvantages of using rival product too. In many commercials, men and women are sometimes used to advertise products. Most commercials are targeted towards the men, while only a few are towards the women. In commercials, women are mostly used to draw attention to the commercial, while the men make up most of the targeted audience. In this process, it is assumed by the producers that attention will be moved from the relevance of the product, to the women. By this, women have lost their values by being dressed half naked in most adverts. Producers have shown not to care about the views of women, all they care about is the popularity of the commercial and the success of the product in the market. They take women to be mere sex symbols in selling products.
John Berger discussed the undermining of women in his documentary, “Ways of Seeing”. This could be dated back to the days of Oil Painting, when women were painted naked in pictures, to the amusement of the men. Back then, women were considered as objects meant to be owned and not to be adored. The painters do not care about the feelings of the women, who appear unwilling in most of the paintings. The women were always at the will of the men at all times.
These morals have been with us ever since then. In most commercials, women have been used immorally to advertise products, as sexual objects meant in attracting attention. The United Kingdom version of the Lynx Shower Gel commercial really got my attention, where a man used the shower gel, and that made women lust after him. They also went as far as taking off their clothes, all because of a shower gel. We all know that being clean is good also attracts positive response from the opposite sex, but that does not mean that women will always strip for any user. The nude scene was completely irrelevant to the product. This depicted women as easy going people.
Darryl Roberts also discussed in his documentary, “America the Beautiful”, the relevance of some billboard commercials. He talked about Billboards where half naked women featured on them. Most times, the product has nothing to do with nudity, but they are just put there to draw attention. He also talked about a thirteen year old girl who became America’s youngest supermodel. As much as people were amazed at how a girl of such a young age could captivate the fashion industry, others thought that she was too young to model. The Fashion designers did not care about her age or her feelings. All they wanted was for her to put on their clothes and get on the runway. At a point, she was asked to lose weight, though she was too skinny. This goes to show that people do not care about the feelings of women. All they care about is the outcome, at all costs.
It is also portrayed in cartoons, where women are drawn almost naked and are shown to children. In a cartoon, “family guy”, one of the male characters once said, “Women are not people, they are devices built by the Lord Jesus Christ for our entertainment”. It may sound funny, but these are actually picked up by children who take the bad perception of women.
Women play an important role in the society and should not be portrayed as just objects. More documentaries will still be made to highlight the damage being done. If nothing is done to end the degrading of women, generations will adopt it as a norm and the trend will continue. Commercials do not need nudity and sexual contents to send their messages across. But also, the producers will argue that they just do it to draw attention, adding that the women portrayed in these commercials, do it out of their own freewill.
No comments:
Post a Comment