Sexualization of Women

It's clear that women are over-sexualized in advertising. There are pictures of women in magazines, in commercials, on billboards, and in internet ads everywhere. There is nothing wrong with most advertisements featuring women. However, there are many that use their sexuality to sell a product. 

Depending on the target audience, the sexualization of women is used in two different ways. If it is an advertisement for perfume or makeup, the target audience is most likely women. In this case, the woman or women featured in an advertisement have the purpose of making viewers want to be like them.

When men are the target audience, women are used in advertisements like objects, especially if their character is victimized in the situation. There could be an advertisement for just about anything that will feature a woman being hypersexualized in some way. This is only to grab the attention of male viewers.

Beautiful women are used to sell products and draw attention to a brand. This is much more prominent in women than it is in men. In advertising, women can be shown as seemingly unintelligent sex objects. Men are surely over-sexualized in media, but it has not caused as much controversy as the situation of women being over-sexualized. This is because the position is much worse for women and it is easier to find advertisements showing women in this way than it is showing men in this way.

Because it could seem like strictly someone's opinion to consider something "sexual," researchers have created a scale to explain how different ads are sexual in different ways. This scale rates photos and models based on the posture, facial expression, camera angle, make-up, activity, and amount of skin shown. The website that explains the scale can be found here:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/social_issues-july-dec13-sexualization_12-21/

Two of the experts included in the creation of this scale, Erin Hatton and Sarah Murnen, analyze images and point out in what ways it is giving off sexual vibes. They found that after years of research the problem of over-sexualizing women in the media has only gotten worse.  “We’ve seen three trends associated with these images,” Sarah Murnen stated, “It’s now common to see more parts of the body exposed. There is more emphasis on the size of women’s breasts. And easy access to all these images has made it all more acceptable to us.”

It's one thing for an ad shows a woman wearing a swimsuit and the ad is for swimsuits. It's another thing when an ad has a woman wearing a swimsuit and the ad is for a cheeseburger. 

It is obviously unnecessary for companies to show women in this way, it is sexist and wrong.

It's easy to see this is a real problem because there are some companies that have such sexist advertisements, it has caused an outrage. For example: almost every single advertisement for Hardee's (a fast food restaurant) contains sexualization of women. It is effortless to find a sexist Hardee's ad because all of them are this way. In fact, all one has to Google search is "Hardee's advertisement" and the results clearly prove my point:

This company has become known for these types of advertisements and it has become their reputation. A company should build their reputation on of something that doesn't degrade women and display them as only sex objects. No company's marketing should be at a point where every single advertisement could be considered sexist. Hardee's, and many other companies, should make themselves known through their food and find other ways to draw customers in that doesn't involve advertising half-naked women.