by Judy Khoo

Created on: August 02, 2007

Being a woman, I could take the easy route and vote to say that advertisements do use sex to sell their products, thus degrading women in the process. However, to agree with this statement would mean a great dishonour to my own self respect and belief.

While advertisements may tend to focus more on women in certain product lines, the intention is more to brain wash us to remember what the product is all about. If the product is about a toy, it is unlikely that the advertisement will focus on sexy good looking women. The focus will then be on children as that would be the target audience.

But if an advertisement is trying to attract men to purchase it, then yes, there might be a tendency to feature women in it. And of course, the reason for using good looking women with good figures is because we cannot deny that men will be more interested in it, hence remembering the product more. Likewise, if the product is for women, well, the advertisement might focus a little on good looking men to capture the interest of the lady.

Advertisements are all about capturing the viewers attention and burning the image into the minds of the viewers. For example, McDonald will not run advertisements to cater for the adults. They will run advertisements to cater for the children because the children will be the ones that makes sure the adults takes them to the stores. The featured toys (sometimes in a series) are the 'power' of attraction. McDonald understands that parents will be very likely to give in to the wants of the children today and hence, marketing is all geared towards children.

For those of us who thinks that it is degrading to see a woman dressed sexily in an advertisement, well, I can only say that this is because we want to see it as such. It is our own mind that tells us that such dressing behavior is degrading. Even if we were to see that woman standing on the roadside dressed in such a manner, we would be disgusted. This has nothing to do with advertisements at all.

If we view an advertisement for what it is, ie that it's role is to sell its product in the best manner possible, then we would not view that they have a role in degrading women at all.

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