Subtle messages...not so subtle

Sexism a word that is strongly enforced in other countries and in ours it’s just covered with advertisements. In other regions of the world being sexist is nothing out of the ordinary instead its highly published and empowered. However, here in America it’s done in a more subtle way so we don’t contradict the fact that we’re “supposedly” all “equal.” However in today’s society men are; strong, rough, aggressive, smart, and powerful and women are delicate, gentle, quiet, dumb, and weak. On the other hand, I find very intriguing that even though we all know ads are everywhere persuading us we still fall for it. In addition, I think we fall for this type of public humiliation because not only is it cultivated in our culture and lives but also, because some of us have become accustomed to it and might even like being center of attention. I think many women for example understand the point of advertising and how badly it can degrade us but, however, some of us don’t mind the attention and bathe in it to receive popularity. “At no time are we more vulnerable to the seductive power of advertising and of addiction than we are in adolescence,” said Kilbourne in Cutting Girsls down to Size. Advertising is very prominent in teenage girls because at their age they’re extremely vulnerable and become brainwashed easily due to their excessive amounts of insecurities.

For instance in Naomi Wolf's Culture she said, “Women can tend to resent each other if they look too “good” and dismiss one another if they look too “bad.” Some women have become so use to being the most beautiful that it has become a competition for who’s the best looking. It’s unfortunate to know that we have turned our backs on each other to please others and by others I mean men. Unfortunately this has empowered men into thinking that we’re only good for certain things like the picture below. This picture is very insulting to me, I feel like the whole point of it is to show men the limited amount of things we’re “good” at and in this case it’s done in a sexual manner.

  Or that we’re just good enough to have around the house so they feel like they have somebody to feel superior to and control. According to men, women are just good for; cleaning, cooking, and obeying demands and so therefore, we’re treated like dirt for the sake of them feeling power and complete domination.

 This Burger King ad is extremely obvious and ignorant. The caption written below the picture, “IT’LL BLOW YOUR MIND AWAY,” is captivating right? It's all in capital letters which makes it that much more annoying because it has to emphasize the "subtle message" that is not that subtle. Its gotten so far that now advertisers have to make sexually degrading ads related to food?? It would have not surprise me if their most frequent customers were men since it’s basically targeted to them in such an obvious manner. Surprisingly enough the purpose of the ad is to convince men that this sandwich is just as good as a blowjob or ten times better.   

  

Women are now fighting against themselves; they are their worst enemies and critics. They have become so critical about everything that it has made their life something that’s not real. Physically women have become someone they’re not they change anything about themselves that is not visually appealing to the public. We don’t even do things to please ourselves anymore we do it to please others especially men because we want to be wanted and desired. Wolf wrote, “to airbrush age off a women’s face is to erase women’s identity, power, and history.” We eject ourselves from reality and try to make our imperfect world “perfect” when technically we can’t. Women can’t stand the idea of aging because they feel like their worthless and not attractive. Aging is perceived as horrible when in reality it shouldn’t be it should represent hard wok and dedication. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6VFS0YF1-w

Commercials like this one show racist in a humorous way so it won’t be taken as seriously. It uses food to express racism and its something that many people would not expect because in the advertisers eyes its done in a “subtle” manner. The commercial shows the long developing journey of a young boy who grows up eating Oreo’s with white filling for years and when he reaches old age he notices something had change inside the cookie so he questions whether to eat or not. We later find out after he tries it that the color of the filling inside the cookie was brown (chocolate) not white but he ends up liking it either way. The point of it though was the fact that the old white man questioned to eat the filling because it was dark. Bell hooks said in Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination “As fantastic as it may seem, racist white people find it easy to imagine that black people cannot see them if within their desire they do not want to be seen by the dark other.” The fact that the white man chose to eat the dark filling shows the option that he felt he had whether to eat the brown filling or not. To be around anything dark and in this case they used dark sugar filling to represent black people.

Racism leads to the power of hierarchies because many races feel superior to other and good and common example is white people feeling superior to all minorities’ not just blacks. The stereotypical white person believes that because they’re lighter, have light eye color, and straight hair that they’re not only physically but also overall just better than other races. Minorities feel that white people think because they have all of the above they have a higher status. However, since when does having lighter colored skin make you more intelligent or educated?  Racism has lead this way of powerful thinking because people still believe that they’re better than others because of how they look or where they come from. It’s created the social class level that no one can seem to balance on. For example, its gotten to the point that it doesn’t even matter whether or not a person is white they just have to be white Americans or European to be considered “better.” White Hispanics don’t count as white because they speak Spanish not French.

Lastly, all of these ads have created and imprinted a huge impact on society and to be honest I think its something that will be hard if not almost impossible to change because people won’t allow it to improve. This way of seeing life through images and feeding from it will never end until the images stop being produced. This will not happen because we live off advertisements and they live off us. They need to brainwash to get us to choose sides or think a certain way so we the “consumers” can help the economy. Advertisers for the most part ignore the public’s emotions and reactions because they need to advertise what sells and the majority of the time what sells is what most harms us. However, advertisers can try and decrease the amount of degrading and insulting advertisements by re-thinking their messages and publishing them in a less disgusting manner that doesn’t persuadably insult their audience. They have to start looking more in depth into the outcomes and less into their profit.