What a Girl Can't Get- Finished

Sexualisation.



Parents use the word when it comes to protecting their precious daughters from it.

Teachers use the word as a warning in class.

 The media uses the word as a weapon.

Sexualisation is out of control- especially when it comes to girls. They are being encouraged to put on more makeup, wear less clothes, and are constantly reminded that if they don't conform, they won't be good enough. A quick search on google can give you everything from an anorexic 12 year old to a women of 30 used to sell age-defying makeup- to get rid of all those ugly wrinkles!


1. Sexual progression- Evony

For those that don't know, Evony is an RST- A Real-Time-Strategy game. The aim is to build your cities and then attack and band with others to gain prestige and honour. The game looks like this:

But the ads look like this:



Sex sells?

Confused?
The game hit the web late 2008 and is still running to this day. During it's maiden year, the advertising campaign swiftly descended from a knight (relevant) to a kidnapped queen (relelvant?) to.... this. (???????)

It's a perfect example of how the media, in this case advertising, resorts to clear sex in order to sell their products. It doesn't even have to relate to the product anymore- Evony makes no mention anywhere within the game of these lovers that you're supposed to save! But still, you have these ads.

"Play Now, my Lord."

"Your lover awaits!"

The message is clear- play evony- get sex.

This text portrays girls as helpless, attractive and sexual, and completely reliant on men. (hence the saving part) It's aimed at the men who the game moderators wish to play, and the ads can be seen everywhere across the internet- including websites often used by young children, such as I Can Has Cheezburger. And there-in is where the danger lies!

I have no problem with adult men clicking these links. They can sink as much money into a game as they want.

But the children? The young girls logging on to look at cute pictures of kittens with adorably misspelt language? That's wrong. They're getting an eyeful of the idea that this is acceptable and this is how you should act and dress- in nothing at all. The ads get through screening because they're advertising a game, rather than an adult site where these ads would be accepted.

The implications of this is that you have these young girls witnessing these ads in a family friendly sight, and therefore that this is okay, and this is what they should model themselves after.

These ads must be that ridiculous for a reason. Look a little further, and you'll find that Evony is commonly referred to a 'gold sinker' that encourages players to level up quickly by putting often thousands of dollars into buying mark-up items and assistance form the game. It works fast on every level- and the ads are here to pull in as many customers as fast as possible, without being lost among the dozens of other game advertisements out there. You can't deny that the Evony ads stand out, and that is also almost a microcosm of the progression of sexualisation- the media tested the waters, found it worked, and everything went downhill fast. We've gone from heroic knights to girls with boobs. There's a problem with that, and it's growing.

Consequentially, this is just going to keep happening. More ads will spring up, because it was proven that it worked, and more ads will start emerging. More and more will slip through family friendly sites in order to get the parents of the young girls. And more girls will be exposed to these sites and will be given the idea that This is okay. 

Evony is only one among many companies that use the mantra 'sex sells.' The only thing that makes it special in a consumers age is that it doesn't try to be subtle about it.





Another way that girls are represented are as socialites- elitists with nothing better to do with their lives than to gain and lose boyfriends... and drink.



2. It's cool to be bad- Gossip Girl

From left to right: Nate, Dan, Serena, Jenny, Blair, Chuck

The second text I'd like to discuss is one extremely popular among the audience in question- the hit TV series Gossip Girl.

Gossip Girl is based off a series of books that follows the lives of the elite teenagers living in Upper East Side of Manhattan- a bunch of wealthy, rather irresponsible friends that drop in and out of trouble. It tells the young, impressionable girls that watch the show that this is what the absolute perfection of teenagedom is.

The key element that makes Gossip Girl so successful is the stereotypical yet entertaining band of characters. Serena Van Der Woodsen is the main protagonist, along with her elite friends, Blair, Nate, Chuck, Dan, Jenny and Vanessa, to name a few.

Some of their favourite past times involve getting drunk, 'hooking up' with each other (and the fallout that follows,) going to parties, paying people off and generally very little homework occurs. None of the teenagers are stupid- in fact, they're all intelligent and most of them fairly manipulative. Instead, the main stereotype here is 'rich.'

It's cool to be rich. Being rich lets you do things no one else does.

What this tells it's audience is that unless you have access to huge amounts of money supplied by your parents, you're not likely to enjoy yourself as much. Or, to put it another way, it's probably a good idea to be able to change your clothes for every occasion and drink expensive alcohol when you're bored, because there's obviously nothing better to do. For teenaged girls who don't have clear complexions or perfect bodies and perfect lives, this show isn't recommended for self-esteem kicks.

Because that's what it does. Gossip Girl promotes what the 'ordinary' girl can't have in terms of looks, money, and friends. It has a large audience of envious girls who wish they could wear a uniform like Serena's, or have boys fawning over them the way Chuck and Nate fawn over Blair.

The reason this show is even around is- surprise surprise- to pull in money. Just like almost every bit of media these days. The clothes worn by Serena, Blair and Jenny are coveted items, and the product placement in the show is huge, and makes millions off the young girls who just want to be as pretty as the girls represetned in their tv shows.

The more expensive, stylish accessories and clothes the producers can push (including the characters' cell phones, school books and furniture) the better. The stereotypical characters allow them to specifically target such glorified commercialism at the open-minded, impressionable young girls glued to their tv screens and seeking their favourite characters. Those little girls take that in, and they take money out of their parents under-developed bank accounts to go out and buy the dresses and makeup. The money from the product placement within the shows goes into the directors and producers pockets (the actors alone make over a million per year, and the directors are paid far more) encouraging them to create more and more elaborate episodes. The product placement itself brings in money from teenaged buying the proven-to-be-fashionable accessories- and it brings in a lot of money. Most of the products in the show are designer, such as the labels gucci and marc jacobs seen above. These labels get huge amounts of notice from being in Gossip Girl, and because of it they only get richer, giving them more room to manouvere when it comes to their advertising- because it works, they make it bigger and better.

The consequences of this is just what the director could have hoped for. The show is a huge money maker, for both the TV show and for the labels that advertise on it, and these girls grow up with the 'it' fashions, and the 'it' alcohol. They'll also grow up finding it comfortable to backstab friends and involve themselves in idle gossip. (get it?) This can be harmful to people around them, with self-confidence easily destroyed among young girls, and reputations ruined for no good reason. Also, teenagers in real life will find it difficult to get away with what the characters on Gossip Girl pull. Illicit parties in the school grounds often leads to trespassing charges, and running away from home will often put you on the street, out of pocket and a victim for abuse. Gossip Girl should really consider a warning at the start of each episode: The events that occur should not be tried at home






With the way girls are represented- sexually and socially, it was bound to upset a few people and shake a few heads. Because the idolisation of women has grown to ridiculous standards, it only made sense for the ridicule of the media to grow, and for a few enterprising companies to start pushing the opposite message.


3. The fight back- Dove "Real Beauty"


The Dove 'Real Beauty' campaign looks at just that. It was started after a poll in the UK introduced the idea to the company that 83% of women no longer believe what the media is saying- that they can be stick thin and sexual while eating a burger or having a shower.

So Dove took the results and ran with them, starting the Real Beauty advertising campaign that looks at how much work goes into making the models that everyone sees that pretty, and how the only girls represented are from a single body type- size 0. It looks at how the people that producers would blanch at using are still beautiful- the old, the scarred and the 'marginalised.'


The ads are hugely successful. Everyone wants to be told they are beautiful and the one thing the media rarely does is tell the modern woman that they are beautiful, so Dove is picking up the slack.

It's worth noting that although new, different and on the whole positive, Dove still favours a stereotype when it comes to their models- median.

The women, although ethnically diverse, are all of a mostly middling height and are all the same weight. None of them have body scars- with the exception of the one woman with a leg tattoo. Dove especially favours the 'typical' women, and is still, even accidentally, promoting the idea that you probably shouldn't be too skinny or too fat. Or too tall. Too short? Too outrageous wouldn't be good.

Don't get me wrong- I think the Real Beauty campaign is a great idea. It promotes self-esteem among women and is a loud voice fighting against the idea of the sexualised model- and the sexualised women. In terms of what it sells through it's ads, Dove is on the whole affordable as well, acknowledging the fact that the women they target don't always have massive budgets. Because of these two combined factors, Dove's sales have soared since the campaign came out. They are unable to release specifics, but the ads increased their profits by over 700%. Some might call it good karma.

It's especially good to note that these ads are promoting a healthy body awareness in teenaged girls, who, in a stage of life where it's hard to be confident, are seeing older women in their prime embracing and enjoying their bodies.

This is sending a really positive for the grounded women. The ads may not promote you to be out there and to be individual, but it encourages you to be satisfied with life. Through this, you could expect to see a change in the way women approach themselves and the media. Now that the pioneer of 'Real Beauty' is out there and fighting back, it is possible that more companies will start to embrace the trend, bringing out a new age of self respect in the media.



You can already see this coming about in New Zealand, with the focus on sportswomen and successful women rather than actresses or models. The Ever-Swindell twins promote healthy eating, and a spree of young sports players are always visible when it comes to Nutri-Grain, Weet-Bix and many other powerful  New Zealand advertisers.





The media is not going to change their mindsets overnight. Sex sells (over 90% of ads use some form of sexualisation), self-esteem hits work, and all in all it makes money. All that can be helped is for more companies to pick up the growing trend of promoting the opposite, and being the forebringers of change.

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