Two Ways A Woman Can Get Hurt

According to Kilbourne, it is dangerous to depict women and men as sex objects because treating a human as a thing instead of an equal makes it far easier to exploit him or her. However, objectification of women is far more dangerous because "there is a context of systematic and historical oppression." Oppression of women is by no means a new concept, and allowing it to be perpetuated by the media only confirms that it still exists. Not only does it confirm it, it reinforces it. Even if on a subliminal level, women develop the notion that they are inherently submissive to men, and they are powerless in a struggle against them. Conversely, men are told that it is their place to force a woman into her proper role, and that if she denies him, she isn't really serious.

Although I mostly agree with Kilbourne, I think that she may have been reading too much into a couple of these ads. On page 432, there's an ad depicting two young girls. I could kind of see the sexual aspect, but I see equally two girls playing dress up and pretending to be models. As a little girl, I probably did that once or twice. I have the same opinion of the "Very Cherry" ad. Both my sister and I had cherry-covered dresses when we were little, and I bet if I scrounged through my sister's lip gloss drawer I could find multiple Very Cherry tubes. Yeah, cherries can represent other stuff, but to a little girl, it's just a cute fruit. For the next ad, you see toddler bums all the time. For most people, they represent youth and freedom, not sexuality. I also thought it was pretty clear that the shadow boxer was boxing with his own shadow.

Obviously many of these are offensive. The Prada ad with a looming unseen character is terrifying. Blatantly tossing a naked Kate Moss onto a couch and tying up various other girls is extremely sexual, scantily clad females begging for the attention of a man who buys their product is absurd, but using images of attacks to promote a product is outlandishly inappropriate. Although the sexualization of women in ads bothers me, actively promoting violence against women can in no way be interpreted to be a good thing. It's just... unbelievable.