Sexism in adverts

Adverts tell us to how to look younger, be slimmer, have perfect hair, have less hair in some other places, smile wider, cook better, clean faster, smell nicer. It is a never-ending story!

Advertising is a huge global business. It is very simple to say that media and huge money are very closely connected. Each year billions of pounds are spent in an attempt to influence our decisions and to persuade us to spend more and more. In a contemporary world advertising is a main factor for sales. For a huge company at a quarterly budget meeting, the number of goods sold is the most important consideration. Since the beginning of the time, temptation has driven human behavior.

Adverts
They are everywhere: on streets, on public transport, in newspapers and magazines, on television. We are bombarded with images and slogans designed deliberately to make us part with our cash.
Think of the number of messages that are aimed at each of us on average day. Something we all try to ignore, claim they do not affect us, but the fact, is that they do exist, and they are EVERYWHERE. And now they are in this article as well. Adverts tell us to how to look younger, be slimmer, have perfect hair, have less hair in some other places, smile wider, cook better, clean faster, smell nicer. It is never-ending story but if between all adverts is there any space or my decisions among all the ads? They use every possible methods to encourage you to reach into your pocket.

Media phenomenon
Personally, I do love a good ad. Some of them can be funny. It is a mass media phenomenon which infiltrates our daily routine, while we are not even paying attention. They scream out, pour out of the television, radio, internet and other mass media with a lot of sexist epithets underneath all that BUY, BUY, and BUY.

Do you notice that there are far too many adverts selling anything to do with food or kitchens or cleaning that only star women in domestic scenarios? Advertising literally makes us get back in the kitchen and prepare a sandwich or an omelet. Hello, stereotype alert!

Kitchen’s the paradise?
The woman is always the one posing next to the new coffee maker, a cooker, or doing the laundry and saving the Earth by washing the dishes at 30C degrees. Of course, it always has to be a woman, because a man would never ever succeed at cleaning anything. Ahahaha, a man cleaning, what a joke! What a shame! Adverts show (teach) us how to live, how to behave, who to invite and why, what we should eat. They interfere in our lives too deeply!

The end justifies the means?
Sex can sell everything. Does not matter if goods are for old or young people, men or women or even for kids!
It is like: SEX. LOOK AT ME. I AM CHEAP. YOU CAN HAVE ME FOR A LOW PRICE, YOU CAN AFFORD TO BUY ME. HEY OVER HERE: SEX! RIGHT, and now I have your attention…

Can it mean that we want to sell this lovely lady or a handsome man for the very reasonable price of 9.99 $/€/£/CHF? It is sexist and false advertising! Advertisers use a man’s/ woman’s body to flog an irrelevant product. That is sexist, and quite patronizing to us as an audience. Surely advertisers realize that their target market is a bit more intelligent than that, even the horny men. But is hard to understand why a Viagra ad is shown between “Teletubbies” or “Postman Pat” on children’s channels. Are they really addressed to kids?! Is a knowledge of “How a Little Blue Pill Changed the World” absolutely necessary for a little Johnny? Mercy!

Is there any chance to change it? I do not think so. BUT we can say loudly – Hello, we are not an artificial form of life, we are human beings, we are a man and a woman and we all have a brain!

Photo: Dick Sargent Pinterest