Evolution Of Women In Advertising Essay

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The evolution of advertising has changed so much since the 1930’s, where clothing was marketed towards ‘everyday’ people. Looking back at the advertising from then, you can clearly tell they were marketed toward hard workers, busy house wives and active children all in one advertisement. Minimal skin was showing and typically the person in the advertisement was hosting a get together or working hard on the family farm. The most important part of advertisements in that era was about versatility and everyday use. Advertising focused on how jeans could make life less complicated by making them appear more versatile and comfortable. At present, however, there are different advertisements for various ages, genders and wealth. Advertisements now show way more skin and sex than ever dreamed before. Women are now portrayed skinner than the average American. This has changed society’s image of young women drastically. Advertising isn’t about selling a product anymore; it’s about using sex to sell a product and to get a person addicted to their product. These new advertisements have created bigger issues in society, such as eating disorders and addictions too many products. Searching for advertisements that ‘pop out’ in today’s society was harder than I imaged. At first I didn’t see anything wrong with the advertisements; as it has become the norm for my generation. In society today we see and hear thousands of different advertisements a day; some with annoying little jingles that get stuck in our heads. Other advertisements show us that show us that if we purchase their products we will be accepted by society by portraying happy, calm, and ideal environments in their advertisement. As a society we see it normal to show skin and sex appeal in advertisements. I truly didn’t see the difference until I started searching for early advertisements in the mid-thirties through the fifties, where women weren’t portrayed as thin figures and they were fully clothed with minimal skin showing. In the early mid-thirties Levi jeans introduced the first advertisement for women jeans. In this advertisement there is a single female standing over a barbeque. She’s wearing loose fitted blue jeans with a matching blue sleeveless flannel top. One hand is holding cooking tongs, while the other one is waving a greeting to someone in the distance. The scent of barbequed hot dogs and hamburgers linger in the summer air. She looks to be beyond excited to see that her guests have arrived just in time for dinner. Above the advertisement reads “Come and get ‘em” referring more to the jeans then the fresh barbeque. This advertisement shows the mid-thirties in a new way for this era, women wearing jeans was still something new and drastic. Typically in the nineteen thirties the male figure was the one cooking outside while the women cooked inside. The focus of this advertisement isn’t how attractive you’ll look in the blue jeans, but the versatility that it allows the wearer. Personally I don’t sense any sexuality in this advertisement. Alexander Wang, a top designer of the twentieth century released a very scandalous and raunchy advertisement that caused uproar in today’s social media. In this advertisement you have a very attractive young woman sitting in a black recliner wearing nothing but the designer jeans around her ankles. The only thing covering …show more content…
Monro and G. Huon (2005) touch on this subject in the article, Media-Portrayed Idealized Images, Body Shame, and Appearance Anxiety. “The media images appear realistic, despite their heavy editing and refining with computer software (Richins, 1991; Thomapson & Heinberg (1999)” (Monro, F. & Huon, G., 2005, p. 85). Multiple studies have been done about who and how advertising has affected young women. In F. Monro and G. Huon’s (2005) article they describe multiple researches between idealized images of women in advertising compared to average women. Most of these studies showed that young females were dissatisfied with their bodies after viewing these ultra-thin models in advertising. F. Monro and G. Huon (2005) state “[…] it is unlikely that all young women are affected by idealized images to the same degree. Women who are more likely to be vulnerable are those whose attention is focused on appearance […]” (p.

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