Violence Jean Kilbourne

Break the Cycle and the National Dating Abuse Helpline have collaborated together to produce an ad that not only appeals to younger people, but also brings awareness to dating abuse. The advertisement titled, “Dating Abuse Affects 1 in 3 Young People” is set up in a way that gets young people thinking about the frequency in which dating abuse happens (Ede 86). The purpose of this visual analysis paper will be to analyze the ad’s use of Aristotle’s three appeals. While pathos and logos dominate the ad, ethos just as importantly supports the ad’s persuasive purpose.

As reflected in the readings of Reading Popular Culture: An Anthology for Writers 3rd Edition, present-day advertisements expand far beyond the endorsement of a product. While the initial intent for various corporations surround the operation of selling and marketing products, many companies also find success in promoting masked messages. According to Jean Kilbourne in her article pertaining to the study of advertisement, she reveals the underlying tactics of commercialized business. As stated in the article “’In Your Face…All Over the Place’: Advertising Is Our Environment”, Kilbourne states “advertising often sells a great deal more than products. It sells values, images, and concepts of love and sexuality, romance, success, and perhaps most important, normalcy (101).” The most recent trend of cultural normalcy: the distaste for natural aging.

In her essay, Kilbourne illustrates how advertising normalizes, and sometimes encourages, behavior that is conducive to sexual violence against women and children.

The studies of this article examine the images of men and women that advertisements perpetuate. Mass media is a widely accessible resource that presents positive and negative portrayals. In today’s society, the traditional differences between genders are constantly reinforced. The male figure is usually characterized as the strong, successful, dominant gender. When advertisements create a target message for men, they exploit the male ego. This means that men are thought provoked to look or be

Dehumanization is the process through which someone asserts control and power, treating the person as an inanimate object with no dimension or surface; becoming an object means being acted upon rather than being the active subject. It is easier to be violent to someone who one already feels power over. Dehumanizing women and men is similar to pornography, where either violence or status (men over women) promotes “power over other” (Kilbourne 420). According to Jean Kilbourne in her essay, “‘Two Ways a Women Can Get Hurt’:Advertising and Violence”, advertisement is portraying women’s body as objects that both lead to dehumanization, violence, and mistreatment toward women. Considering the opposing characterization between males and females, femininity refers to submissiveness and vulnerability that is often depicted in advertisement. Notions such as “sex sells” are not necessary true, for the observers recognize the damaging images in which women are portrayed. Advertisements that depict possessive and violent men toward women are should not be selling. For example, “no”does not mean “convince me”, when taken otherwise may lead to sexual abuse.

Rhetoric is used in all types of writing. It persuades an audience to accept or consider an idea. Two of the rhetorical appeals that are used in Kilbourne article are Logos and Ethos. The appeals to logos is the rhetors reasoning. In other words, logos is the way an author convinces his/her audience that an argument makes sense or seems logical by creating the technique of an argument. The appeals to ethos is similar to logos, but relies more on trustworthiness and credibility rather than making sense immediately. In Jean Kilbourne’s article Two Ways a woman can Get Hurt: Advertising and Violence, overviews our society and the roles male and female are expected to fulfill. She exposes advertisement’s that promote the unfairness and wrongful

In his article, “Men’s Men and Women’s Women,” Steve Craig describes how sellers differentiate and analyze sex by trying to use the buyers’ fantasies to match the expectations of ones’ age and sex which allows them to use their marketing funds more efficiently. According to Craig, we are living in a patriarchal society, where the man are the ones placing these advisements in society and creating trends. His analysis of four distinctive television advertisements is going to still try to largely uphold a patriarchal social structure. Although, on the surface these advisements may appear to be empowering both genders, it is still copying culture’s ideology of gender.

Advertising is displayed all around the world for everyone to see and it sometimes gives a bad message to the viewers. Advertisements tell us that there is only one dominant way to be feminine and only one dominant way to be masculine and if you do not conform to these gender codes that is not considered normal. Unfortunately, I have caught myself following these gender codes that are shown in advertising, it has affected me with the way I see people and myself. By using a sociological perspective I have started to look into the advertisements that I see and understand how women are portrayed as helpless and weak while men are portrayed as powerful and dominant. I also looked into how advertising supports hegemonic masculinity, which is the idea of masculinity being dominant. (Ravelli and Webber 2016: 203).

Advertising is a form of propaganda that plays a huge role in society and is readily apparent to anyone who watches television, listens to the radio, reads newspapers, uses the internet, or looks at a billboard on the streets and buses. The effects of advertising begin the moment a child asks for a new toy seen on TV or a middle aged man decides he needs that new car. It is negatively impacting our society. To begin, the companies which make advertisements know who to aim their ads at and how to emotionally connect their product with a viewer. For example, “Studies conducted for Seventeen magazine have shown that 29 percent of adult women still buy the brand of coffee they preferred as a teenager, and 41 percent buy the same brand of mascara” (Source

number of advertisements seen everywhere on a daily basis. “Sex in advertising is pornographic because it dehumanizes and objectifies people, especially women …” (Kilbourne, 271). The objectification of women in our society is more prevalent than many would like to believe. Women being portrayed as passive, easy, innocent, needy, submissive and dependent beings create an understanding that women are less human than men. “Turning a human being into a thing, an object, is almost always the first step toward justifying violence against that person” (Kilbourne,278). When advertisers continuously use women as sex objects in order to sell their

“Anything is possible when your man smells like Old Spice and not a lady.” Is the message of this advertisement for Old Spice aftershave located here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE

Dolce and Gabbana is a high-end Italian clothing company that was founded by Stefano Gabbana in 1985 targeting women primarily, famous for their superior sartorial content. It was not until 1990 that menswear collections started to appear and made its entrance in Dolce and Gabbana stores. In 2007, Dolce and Gabbana released their spring/summer ready-to-wear collection that targeted individuals in the upper class who wanted to dress casually but still feel expensive. This advertisement caused controversy amongst women about objectification. However, the advertisement also targets the social group of men being represented as dominant, powerful and in control in order to sell clothes and the idea of confidence through wearing Dolce and Gabbana clothes.

Advertisement two: Calvin Klein is a dark-full colour advert, for Calvin Klein Jeans advertisement (Figure II). Nudity combined with the body position and body language make this a highly sexual ad and a solid reason for its inclusion in the study. The Calvin Klein advertisement features a woman with a nude torso positioned on top of man with a nude torso. The visual elements presented in the second ad by Calvin Klein create visual texture; the ocean/rocks surrounding the human figures creates a frame focusing the eye on the bodies in the centre. The woman’s fixated body pulling away from the male model attracts the viewer down her arm, to her waist pointed at the logo at the bottom of the page (right-hand-side). The females almost exposed breast in the centre of the ad is positioned under the man’s arm. This juxtaposition

Advertisement plays upon emotions, creating a scenario that heightens the consumer’s emotional state. They build a fantasy in which the consumer’s life is better because of the product. Advertisements sell values, images, love and sexuality. Over the years advertisements have attempted a wide variety of advertising approaches like humor, sex, emotions. Advertisers use one of these appeals to ensure that the targeted audiences receive their message. The media’s framing of women in highly restricted and negative ways is a global phenomenon that cuts across all cultures and has endured a long passage of

This research paper presents a content analysis on the portrayal of women in advertisements. This paper is written to better understand the stereotypes of women in advertising. The paper will also include the harsh realities female receivers have to face due to the portrayal of unrealistically thin and technologically perfected super models. Many women are portrayed as sexual objects and are constantly being degraded. Few examples of using sex appeal will also be discussed in this paper.