Sexualisation of advertising

One of the most invasive and bombarding media types is advertising. Advertisers use the female body- and girls themselves- as their largest asset, to the point where it's inescapable to go through your day without seeing a photoshopped, stylised advertisment promoting the fact that you aren't as pretty as you could be.

Advertising favours the sexual, dominant socialite as it's representation of women- not unlike the 'grown up' version of the cast of Gossip Girl. The girls you see are popular, inhumanely pretty and content with the way their lives are going. In fact, the media promotes almost the opposite of a real girl's situation in order to make them feel inadequate.



"Buy these shoes- I'd want them"

The effect this has on it's audience is that they are constantly being reminded that they are unworthy. The intention of the advertisers is that the slightest slip in self confidence and these women are there, reminding you what you can do to make yourself feel better.

Because of this, we can't blame girls, teenagers and even younger, for wanting to model themselves after these perfect women. If these women are sexy, and happy, then surely being sexy will make every girl happy. Even at the cost of those $200 shoes. The effects have gotten so bad that it's taken as normal for young girls to start sexualising themselves. Take a guess at how old this French model, Thylane Loubry Blondeau is.

She's 10.

It's hard to find proof of whether or not this is harmful. Like Gossip Girl, it's definitely promoting a bad moralistic image- you have to conform and be pretty to fit in- but the rebuttal is that girls are aware that it is fake and shouldn't take it to be realistic.







This girl, for example, is far too desperate for that bottle.

They make a valid point. Most mature women are able to look past the glamour and note how unrealistic advertising truly is. The damage is in how constant the media is- the more you see, the harder it is to tell yourself it's fake.

This has led to a small number of rebuttal campaigns, using 'real women' with 'real lives' and showing the background to what goes on in those photoshoots. However, that's not quite the same for young teenage girls as that image of perfection they're asked to strive for- and it's those girls that those ads are aimed at, in order to secure another generation of consumers.