Continued visual objectification: The image of the fair sex in occidental advertisements

Abstract

Portrayals of women in the mass media have always been a source of contention amongst scholars. Right from the emergence of the mass media, women have been stereotypically portrayed as an inferior being whose primary domain was home and who was viewed as a sexual object. In spite of feminists’ efforts to stop women’s denigration in the media over the course of several decades, women are still depicted as weak and sexual object, especially in the advertising industry. The visual objectification of women engenders a distorted view of the place of women in society. This paper examines the images of women in Occidental advertisements and exhibits that the stereotypical objectification of women leads to desensitization of violence against women and causes women to develop self-objectification. To counter the effect of the images, we argue that media literacy can help people to critically look at the images and recognize the constructed fantasy from reality.