The Sexual Objectification of Women in the Media: A Literature Review
The sexual objectification of women in the media and advertising has been a pervasive part of the feminist discourse over the past century. Communication researchers have studied how female objectification has been used by popular media, have noted its prevalence and have studied its implications on our culture’s consciousness. This paper will provide a review of some of the literature of scholars who have studied objectification in the media, the affects it has on its viewers and the rhetoric that lies behind its extensive use.
Rosalind Gill’s article (2007) notes that women have been extensively objectified within the media since the early 21st century. She notes though that there has been a shift in the way that women’s bodies have been portrayed in the mass media and that this shift is exemplified through the figure of the ‘midriff’ (Gill, 2007, p. 3). This shift began to take hold as the feminists of the 60s and 70s critiqued the way advertisements were objectifying women and subordinating them. In an attempt to co-opt these criticisms, contemporary adverts now portray women as active, desiring sexual objects which are meant to highlight a more dominant sexual role for women to take. A form of ‘commodity feminism’ thus arises which seeks to redistribute the critiques of feminism back to the audience in order sell a particular product.
Gill notes that this major contemporary shift that has recently occurred is a new construct that portrays woman as using their sexual powers to achieve their own ends. This new sexual dynamic, ‘the midriff’, portrays the women’s body as a main source of capital: a sexy body is held as a higher source of identity than that of motherhood. By comodify-ing their appearance and selling themselves like a product, the midriff suggests that women can gain a sense of power and control over others: rather than seek men’s approval, women should seek to please themselves. Gill notes however that with the strong influence of pornography within this kind of media, what women want is often portrayed as parallel to what men want: to turn women's bodies into a strictly sexual objects. Nevertheless, advertisements that utilize the midriff as a gaze inducing device continue to claim that women will become empowered by using their product.
To counter this claim, Gill argues that midriff advertisement is really presenting the old chauvinist ideas of female subjugation and objectification covered with a veneer of post-feminism. This veneer is designed to defend the objectifying ads against feminist criticism. Most of the research on midriff advertising states that despite their supposed empowerment claims, women are still more often portrayed as less powerful than men. She argues that they also convey that a women’s power is directly related to what she buys, and that women should become narcissists; Gill argues that none of these messages embody true feminist ideals. Gill concludes her article and restates her points by noting Douglas Rushkoff’s critique in Merchants of Cool in which he implies that the midriff presents a way for advertisers to repackage old sexual stereotypes and sell them back to the consumer while evading charges of sexism.
What sort of effects might occur as a result of exposure to ads that objectify women such as midriff advertising? According to Greening’s article (2010), there are several negative consequences to the objectification and dismemberment of women through media advertising. In order to sell their products, advertisements often teach the public to view women’s body parts as objects (women become objectified by others) and tell women to internalize others’ perceptions of their bodies (women are taught to self-objectify their own self-image). Greening reports that self-objectification can lead women to adopt a more shameful and critical view of their own bodies; this can lead to a number of health risks in women including eating disorders, depression and sexual dysfunctions. This objectification may also influence how heterosexual men interact within relationships with women. The sociocultural influences of objectification in the media may lead men to adopt the “centerfold syndrome” in which men view their relationships with women in terms of voyeurism: men may learn to objectify their partner and fear true intimacy (Greening, 2010, 4).
Greening’s paper goes on to discuss the dismemberment of women in the media and how its effects are equally as negative as those of objectification. Through dismemberment, women become dissatisfied with their bodies as a whole and begin to see the imperfections of each individual part of their bodies. Greening notes that further studies needs to be done in order to assess how dismemberment specifically leads to detrimental consequences for viewers. She ends her article by noting that sexualized media not only negatively affects the self-perceptions of adult women but also young girls, and that their influence can lead to long term health problems throughout an individual’s life.
If these advertisements are negatively affecting the perceptions of women within our culture, do women today agree that they are harmful? Amanda Zimmerman’s article (2008) looks at contemporary women’s own attitudes towards sexual objectification in advertisements. The article begins by noting that despite criticism of sexual ads in the recent century, there has been an increase in the number of ads that present alluring female bodies. A result of a 1991 study revealed that women of that year were critical of these portrayals and found them to be offensive, but Zimmerman suggests that these views may now have changed in response to the cultural impact of third wave feminism. In order to see if a change in views has occurred, the article presents a more recent study that hypothesizes that young, educated women will find more sexual advertisements to be culturally acceptable, that they will find them less offensive, and that they are more likely to have a positive view of the advertised products. From her results, Zimmerman’s study revealed that while the participants did agree that the ads contained a large amount of sex and that their portrayal of women was unrealistic, they did found most all of the ads culturally acceptable (not negative or offensive). While they agreed that the ads did objectify women, they were more forgiving of companies that used these tactics to sell than in the 1991 study and they were more willing to purchase the products that these companies presented.
Zimmerman emphasizes that the contemporary women may have found that the advertisements were done more tastefully than in the previous study because the objectification of women has now become a more common part of their culture. Zimmerman concludes by noting that today’s young females have been raised in a more highly sexual atmosphere that has become a focal point of the current media landscape. In order to become more educated consumers, these women must realize that these ads don’t truly reflect the real world: they are alluring images manufactured together to make a sale.
Though today’s women may be more accepting of objectification in advertising, several studies point to the real, negative effects that these ads can immediately have on viewers. Jennifer Stevens’ study (2009) attempts to confirm objectification theory by empirically recording how the visual depictions of female objectification ultimately lead to self-objectification (SO) in the viewer and thus to negative self-appraisals of body image. Objectification theory affirms that self-objectification forces women to define themselves in terms of how their bodies appear to others; by encouraging women to self-objectify through advertising, the media is contributing to a dehumanizing process. Stevens argues that these ads have priming effects that can induce short term states of SO in viewers which can be measured experimentally. Stevens hypothesizes that women viewing other women in advertisements as either body-display (women displaying their bodies sexually) and body-part (showing parts of a woman) images will show heightened states of SO and will thus use more negative descriptors to appraise themselves. Her study revealed that while the body-display images induced higher states of SO, and thus negative self-appraisals of body image, the body-part images induced no significant main effects. Nevertheless, Stevens confirms in her discussion that these results support the evidence for the short term effects of media exposure on the evaluation of women’s bodies, but that these priming effects may dissolve over time with a break from exposure. The best way for women to avoid these effects is to avoid viewing these ads.
The key draw towards using female objectification within an advertisement is to use sexual ideas to trigger a desire for the product within the view. William Barr’s article on sex and advertising (2011) takes a look at how sexual themes are used in these advertisements. Barr notes that sex is often used to sell in ads through attractive models, double entendres, revealing bodies and suggestive photography. These ads are not only selling a product, but presenting particular ideas about sex, such as that men more often assume the more dominant role in the relationship and can have multiple female partners. He also notes that sexual humor in these ads is almost always oriented toward the male point of view, meaning that women are more often reduced to the butt of jokes. Barr concludes his article by noting that it is ultimately the audience that must decide if these ads are truly effective in selling both their products and sexual ideas.
Objectification will likely continue to be used in the popular media in order entice audiences, but perhaps through informed understanding, viewers may have a better grasp on the effects that objectification may have on the viewing public and thus become more educated consumers. It is the hope of this paper (and I believe that of much of the research presented here) that viewers may understand the prevalence of objectification in the media and the inherently detrimental messages that are being communicated to them via its rhetoric.
Works Cited
Gill, Rosalind. Supersexualize Me! Advertising and ‘the midriff.’ Gender Institute. Chapter prepared for Attwood, F., Brunt, R & Cere, R (Eds) (2007) Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualization of Culture. I.B. Taurus
Greening, Kasey D. (2010) The Objectification and Dismemberment of Women in the Media. Undergraduate Research Journal for the Human Sciences, Capital University, 38 (2).
O’Barr, William. (2011) Sex and Advertising. Advertising and Society Review, 12 (2).
Stevens, Jennifer, Henson, Jayne, Hooper, K. Megan, & Smith, Siobahn. (2009) A Picture is Worth Twenty Words (About the Self): Testing the Priming Influences of Visual Sexual Objectification on Women’s Self-Objectification. Communication Research Reports., 26 (4), p. 271-284.
Zimmerman, Amanda, & Dahlberg, John. (2008) The Sexual Objectification of Women in Advertising: A Contemporary Cultural Perspective. Journal of Advertising Research, 3 (7).