Introduction

There are many food and alcohol advertisements that feature women in an objectified way. Advertisements frequently promote the male gaze, which is extremely harmful to a woman’s body image.

Within the following blog posts, you will see several examples of print images that use women’s sexuality as a method of catching attention to sell their products. Unfortunately, sex sells. It’s a tactic that has become so commonplace that we rarely give it a second glance.

The point of this blog is to point out that this isn’t human nature. It’s a cultural norm, it’s harmful, and it can be stopped. These points will be discussed in detail in the posts to come. Check back to see more if you agree that females are friends- not food!

Literal object imagery

This objectification of women as worthy based only on their sexual appeal is similarly seen in a Michelob beer advertisement. Here, a woman’s body is legitimately turned into an object – a bottle of beer – in an attempt to sell the product. The only feature that remains ‘human’ is her face; her head is thrown back, her eyes are closed, and her mouth is open as if gasping in a moment of orgasmic passion. Sex sells, and here Michelob is clearly attempting to take advantage of the female sexual image by equating it to their product. Jean Kilbourne has spent her career addressing the negative influence of advertisements such as these, and argues that “by creating a climate within which the marketing of women’s bodies – the sexual sell and dismemberment, distorted body image ideals, and children as sex objects – is seen as acceptable” (Kilbourne 1998). The pervading presence of sexualized advertisements normalizes stereotypical gender roles, and serves to maintain women’s inferiority in a patriarchal society.

Kilbourne, Jean. “The More you Subtract, The More you Add: Cutting Girls Down to Size.” Deadly persuasion: why women and girls must fight the addictive power of advertising. New York, NY: Free Press, 1999. 128-154. Print.

Male gaze

For this advertisement, I would like to do a media content analysis by looking at the production, language, representation, and audience of this ad.

Production: This ad was produced by Bacardi rum. The alcohol industry is notorious for using sexualized imagery to sell alcohol. They are mostly self regulated, however the content of advertisements is regulated by the Federal Trade Commission, which has the authority to prohibit unfair or deceptive acts/practices in advertisements. This mostly applies to misinformation though, so most often companies will take down an ad if it receives strong and vocal negative feedback. The male gaze eliminates women’s voice or agency in the ad.

Language: By leaving out the woman’s face, we are left with her sexualized body to stare at. The direct, straightforward shot of her stomach and breasts mimics the way a male would look at her. By having an alcoholic beverage in her hand, she seems fun and easy going. Her hand suggestively placed pulling down her pants exposes her leopard print underwear, implying that she is willing to have sex. Despite the blatant male gaze image, the tagline of the ad is also extremely concerning. The ad says, “Pussy cat by day. Bacardi by night.” This language implies that women are sexual kittens who only need to be released by drinking liquor by night.

Representation: This ad is claiming that liquor makes women sexual and free, and objectifies their bodies as subject to the male gaze. This is a truth commonly repeated in the media today.

Audience: The audiences of this ad are likely predominately men, as the ad is intended to mimic their gaze and imply that if they find a woman who drinks bacardi, they will get laid. However, it also has an effect on women. They see this ad, and want to be the sexy easy going bacardi drinking beauty shown in the ad that men are so dawn to.

In Taste Matters: Bikinis, Twins, and Catfights in Sexually Oriented Beer Advertising, Jason Chambers says, “representations of women are a visual conglomeration of their legs, breasts, faces, and hair. Such depictions reduce women to a less than human state because they are not shown as whole persons (162).” In the Bacardi ad, the women is only an object to be looked at and nothing more.

Chambers, Jason. “Taste Matters: Bikinis, Twins, and Catfights in Sexually Oriented Beer Advertising.”10. . 162., . . Print.

Objectification

In this Sky Vodka advertisement, a man is standing over a sexual woman, who is wearing almost nothing showing his domination over her. Debra Merskin addresses the pornographic gaze and objectification in advertising in her book “Media, Minorities, and Meaning.” She argues that, “Female identity in advertising is almost exclusively defined in terms of females sexuality. In the case of women, this largely becomes a question about the lack of social power. The nude body of a woman in advertising is ubiquitous as it reflects ‘cultural normas about appearance, control, and attractiveness’ (Bordo 1993). As Schroeder and Borgerson (1998) point out, ‘women are objectified in many ways, each suggesting and reinforcing the perspective that women are objects to be viewed voyeuristically, fantasized about, and possessed.'” (Merskin 2011).¹ In an attempt to specifically analyze this advertisement I will do basic analysis of the layers of meaning in the ad.

The Surface Meaning: On the surface, this ad shows a man standing over a women. Her breasts are on display. He holds a glass in one hand and a bottle of liquor in the other. His face is not shown, and hers is diminished by her sunglasses and her breasts – which are clearly the focus of the ad.

The Advertiser’s Intended Meaning: The advertiser is associating sex and beautiful women with drinking skyy vodka. She lays beneath him vulnerable and willing because he has the alcohol in his hand. The fact that the glass is empty implies that he has already been drinking, and perhaps this is why he is now standing over such a beautiful woman.

The Cultural or Ideological Meaning: By showing the man standing over the woman, it implies that women are culturally subordinate to men. That their sole purpose is for the pleasure or gratification of men. His position of power in the ad reflects the cultural norm that men are dominate over women. The overt sexualization of her body subliminally conveys to viewers that this woman’s only worth comes from the man’s interest in her, and her ability to subsequently pleasure him.

---

---

^{1 Merskin, Debra L.. Media, minorities, and meaning: a critical introduction. New York: Peter Lang, 2011. Print.}

Gratification

This Burger King advertisment is completely centered on the desire of men to be gratified by oral sex. Burger King is shamelessly using sex to attract men, and blatantly persuade them buy their burgers.

These portrayals of sex focus solely on the dominance of men. In Injuries that Injure, Lisa Wade and Gwen Sharp address the notion that sex sells and argue, “Advertisers use a limited version of sex: a nearly uniformly heterosexual version that presents men as active sexual subjects and women as passive sexual objects who perform for the please of the (implicitly male) viewer” (Ross, Susan 163).¹ In this ad, the woman is passively allowing herself to be orally penetrated by the phallic image of the hamburger.

Ads like these reinforce women’s role as an object of male pleasure, rather than an equal to be taken seriously. This is reflected in the work force, the jobs that women hold, and the pay gap. Ads like this also reinforce that women should remain in a subordinate position to men.

Some other infamous examples are:

Carl’s Jr and Paris Hilton: “She’ll tell you size doesn’t matter. She’s lying.
Ohhhhhh because the size of your burger directly relates to the size of your… yeah, I think you get it.

Budlight’s #UpForWhatever Campaign: “The perfect beer for removing ‘no’ from your vocabulary for the night.”
To be fair, they released a public apology for this one, however the sexual implications of not saying “no” are extremely harmful.

---

^{1 Ross, Susan Dente, Paul Martin Lester, Lisa Wade, and Gwen Sharp. “Selling Sex.” Images that injure pictorial stereotypes in the media. 3rd ed. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, 2011. 163-172. Print.}