Many of us watch TV, look at our smart phones, or even browse the internet on our computers at least once a day, normally more. But when you’re just browsing, do you realize the type of advertising that you are being exposed to, simply by what comes up on your screen? The answer, probably not. Fear not, I am here to help you understand what and how hypersexualization affects women in today’s society.
Hypersexualization is defined as girls being depicted or treated as sexual objects. It also means sexuality that is inappropriately imposed on girls through media, marketing or products that encourage them to act in an adult-like and sexual way. The problem with this is that many of these sexual acts are imposed on girls far too young to understand the implications of why they shouldn’t be doing this, which we can blame on the strong media culture we as a society has adapted to having.
If you never took a look at ads for cars or even foods, you would notice that a lot of them feature women in little to no clothing bending over in suggestive ways that having nothing to do with the product. An example of this is Dolce & Gabbana, where an ad shows a man seductively crawling over an underdressed woman, even though this is an ad for clothing. Another is Tom Ford cologne shoot, where the bottle of cologne is placed in between a women’s breast and her private area. This ad doesn’t make sense even with the product because it’s an ad for men’s cologne, but the company has used a women’s body to try to get men to buy it, which just shows how men see women’s bodies as a whole. Companies like American Apparel use the hypersexualization of women in almost all of their ads, using them wearing little of their own brand of clothing and using witty slogans like “Now Open” or using poses where the women can be seen as very exposed. These are just a small portion of the many ads that promote their products through hypersexualizing women.
There is no reason that these types of ads need to be shown in order to get people to buy a product, many people would buy them even without the exposing advertising. Although the media has taken a step back and there has been a decrease in how many of these ads include hypersexualization, there is still a lot that are influencing young girls across the world.
