Advertisements Effects on Women

In our culture, our standards for how wo workforce essential require and act atomic number 18 important to us. So important that theyve become damaging to our well- beingness. Women arouse no way of escaping being judged on what they wear or how they do their hair. There is no regular female, absolve of standards, unlike a male. Nowadays, media and even language have influenced our ideals for gender conventions, mostly unconsciously. Pressure on females to forgather into these conventions is higher than eer.Mediaads, television, movies, magazines, and celebritiesis something we can non escape. It surrounds us almost every minute of every day. Involuntarily, the average American check outs 3000 ads in a day, and spends 2 years of their life watching television commercials (Kibourne). The disadvantages of female conventions have become bigger than ever before, and have come to driving women to extremes. putting to death Us Softly 4 by Jean Kilbourne is a remarkably eye-openin g documentary about how media affects our values, concepts, and ideals. As Ive already stated, we cannot run away from advertising.Most people study theyre not influenced by ads, solely everyone is influenced by ads, whether they like it or not. Media demos us ideals of what we should be, what everyone should strive to be. They do much(prenominal) than try to sell us products. What we withal dont realize is most of the images were cater through advertising are an unrealistic ideal. Computer retouching, also known as Photoshop, is more popular than ever in advertising, and the women on ads were comparing ourselves to, are calculator created. Nobody looks like that, hardly we continue to compare ourselves to them.In doing so, it creates an absurd amount of pressure on women. Our self-conceit is affected greatly. Advertisements drive women to extremes, such as plastic surgery and eating disorders. Plastic surgery is more popular than ever, and 91% of it is performed on women (Kilbourne). Breast implants are one of the most common plastic surgeries, but when done, most women lose hearting and sensation in their breasts. When we lose happening, the procedure is less about our pleasure, and more about other peoples satis faction with a cleaning ladys body.Advertisements show us that aging equals terror. Botox is injected into the face to remove all signs of emotion a woman could have. Ads also show us that women should be ashamed of what they eat, that most food is a guilty pleasure. Our culture, thats spreading to antithetical parts of the world, has the capability to make woman everywhere to feel spartan about them selves. When a womans self confidence is brought down, they give themselves a makeover to try to look more desirable and feel better about themselves.A change of wardrobe, makeup, or hair can help a woman feel a lot better. In doing so, a woman also admits to mark her self and how people see her. This brings me to Deborah Tannens essay There is No Un tag Woman. Tannen defines the term marked as the way language alters the meanspirited meaning of a word by adding a linguistic particle (Tannen 68). Some examples are learn, being the unmarked word, and learnt, being marked and defining a more specific word. Marked words also convey female words, as opposed to unmarked words conveying male. Just as similar, females have to make decisions about clothing and their air, whereas males do not females are marked, males are unmarked. As Tannen states in the title, there is no unmarked woman. A woman has a widespread choice of decisions to make on her appearance so that she makes a statement about herself. The range of decisions for males to choose from is much narrower. Tannen examines that men can choose styles that are marked, but they dont have to (Tannen 68). Women cant even choose a formal title without judgment Mrs. and Ms. communicate a relationship status.Tannen even goes as far as to state that writing the a rticle on unmarked women may mark her as a feminist, not as a writer. She states merely mentioning women and men marked me as a feminist for some (Tannen 70). between these two writers, they cover a lot of common ground. A marked woman, also a woman greatly affected by advertisements, succumbs to consumerism. Feminine qualities are devalued by advertisements therefore being marked is also devalued. Men are portrayed in advertisements to not have any feminine qualities, so expressing disapproval for all things feminine.Consequently, men devalue women, and feminine qualities are consistently being devalued. Human qualities are divided into two separate parts and labeled, masculine and feminine. An unmarked man conveys being masculine date marked women are feminine and therefore not taken as seriously as men. Kilbourne states men basically dont live in a world in which their bodies are routinely scrutinized, criticized, and judged, whereas woman and girls do (Kilbourne). The disad vantages of gender conventions heavily outweigh the benefits. In fact, I couldnt find any reasonable benefits.Advertisements put pressure on women to choose to dress in a certain way, or do their hair this way. They put pressure on women to be wanted and beautiful. The idea that there is no marked woman is because we have such a vast variety of choices in how we look. Our ideals are be greatly thanks to advertising. Most marked choices that women make are because of ideals that advertisements feed us. These gender conventions will never cease, and theyll continue to perpetuate. Why? Well, because advertisers make a profit off of making us feel terrible about ourselves.As I stated before, when we feel our self-esteem is low, we try to make over ourselves. The only way to make over your self is through buying products. Females try to fit the ideal thats fed to us. Females do indeed feel a lot of pressure to be desired. After watching Killing Us Softly 4, I run into where this pressu re comes from. No one seems to think that advertising rightfully affects us in any way, when you already know it greatly does. The amounts of decisions we have to make about how we look are overwhelming.I believe that Kilbournes documentary is tremendously relieving because shes opening peoples eyes to the fact that the media does in fact influence us. Even though Tannen tells us that theres no escaping these judgments base off our decisions, Kilbourne lifts a weight off our shoulders by telling us that these standards are ridiculously unrealistic. more than women than ever have disorders and issues because of the demand to basically look unreal, and I think that we need to start educating our young about advertising and its harmful effects.During adolescence, were greatly influenced by everything around us, and I think itd be beneficial to show children in middle school documentaries similar to Jean Kilbournes serial of Killing Us Softly. People need to understand the images ad s show us are wrong. Women will unceasingly feel pressure to be acceptable to everyone, but the pressures ads are giving women nowadays are misleading. I believe that the fashion industry, with its ever increasingly thin models, and the advertisement industry, devaluing women and creating mpractical ideals, both have some small, but significant, changes to make. I also believe that people should be educated in advertising as it becomes harder to avoid, to understand the industry the way Kilbourne does. People should be able to have thoughts and ideals of their own.Works Cited Killing Us Softly 4. Dir. Sut Jhally. Media precept Foundation, 2010. DVD. Tannen, Deborah. There is No Unmarked Woman. ENG 701 Fall 2010 Course Packet. Ed. Alessandro Braidotti. Temple University, 2010. 68-70. Print.