Gender and Advertisement

This week in class we watched a video about how advertisements use gender and sex to sell products. This has been something that always bothered me simply because many products that are being sold with an underlying sexual tone have nothing to do with sex or anything related to it. In the video, the speaker addresses food ads as a culprit of this type of advertisement. Why do we have the need to sexualize food? At the same time that we are selling food as "sexy" we, as a culture, same women (and men for that matter) for being overweight or not eating properly. What a confusing message to send! The video was largely based on how women are treated in the advertising world, preferring sickly skinny models who fit into a very small mold of looks. I think this video did a good job at bringing these advertising flaws to the forefront, but I also wish it had more to say about how men are treated in advertising. I will grant that often times women are objectified more often than men, but that still does not make it ok when men are objectified. At one point in the video, the speaker brings up an ad where a man is all but naked, and we cannot see his face. The speaker says that this is not nearly as bad as the ads for women we see because at least this ad does not have any objectifying statements on it. While this is true, it was simply a picture, I think its important that we recognize when people are being objectified regardless of "how bad it is" or what their gender is. If we truly want to take a stand and make a change in our society, we should start with the same standards for everyone.