Women in Advertising

Bayer's "Great Ideas" advertisement is a perfect example of the transition between the beginning of the objectification of women in advertisement in the Art Nouveau period and modern advertisement. His advertisement depicts women as a big part of decadent living, both as an object and as a source, and puts a negative spin on this "collage depicting affluence and decadence" (Meggs 347) by including a quote from Theodore Roosevelt, "The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, and love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life." This implies that women are a byproduct of these things that Roosevelt says will destroy the country.

Women are pictured alongside money, diamonds, gambling, alcohol, and fruit that represents decadence and sexuality. Words like "Daily Double" and "Corruption" also encircle the main blonde woman. 

Today, it seems like this objectification and over-sexualization of women has been carried out to an extreme in advertising. Though instead of it being criticism as it is in Bayer's ad, it is a tool to push products by placing them on and around attractive women. Unfortunately, as it is often said, sex sells, so this pattern keeps going. I think it's absolutely ridiculous, particularly when the sexed up scenes in the ad have basically nothing to do with the product. Companies like Dolce & Gabbana, Calvin Klein, and American Apparel seem to just focus their ads more on the sex and women than on anything that they're selling, and sadly it works. Women are still associated with decadence and excess, it's now just seen as a positive thing that sells product. In my mind, it's not much better than pornography, and a lot of it is just, for lack of a better word, stupid.

Um, this is hot? It's more awkward to me. Like, kind of Leah Marie awkward.

Is she being raped? How is this good?

Again, just awkward.

The focus is definitely not on the jeans.

Because some of the pictures I found are extremely inappropriate and just awkward, I am posting a link to another blog post with a good collection of them.

http://damalagaitianwoman.blogspot.com/2010/07/im-just-saying.html