Photo by mókusom
OUR LOVELY SISTER Anastasia isn’t the only woman who wants to draw our attention to sexist depictions of women in advertising. To the contrary, she’s in excellent company–and has been for nearly 40 years.
I loved Anastasia‘s dive into the murky depths of nasty images of women in advertising. I share her nauseated fascination with misogynistic salesmanship, and it’s all my mother’s fault.
My mom married her high school sweetheart at 19 and was known somewhat derisively among my schoolmates as “Susie Homemaker,” thanks to her tendency to send elaborate and frequent care packages (thanks, Mom!). She was also an ardent feminist, and a charter subscriber to Ms. Magazine.
I have fond memories of her taking me to ERA (that’s the Equal Rights Amendment, for those of you too young to remember) marches in Chicago when I was a girl. I was raised to believe that Gloria Steinem and Letty Cottin Pogrebin, along with Betty Friedan (who was not part of Ms., but whose 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with launching second wave feminism), were some kind of holy trinity. But even more vivid are the memories of reading her monthly issue of Ms. A lot of it went over my head, but not a small section in the back of the book every month called “No Comment.”
“No Comment” ran every single issue, always presenting one or more ads that degraded women in some way. They ranged from simple objectification to overt exhortations to violence. Ms. is now a quarterly, published by the Feminist Majority Foundation, and the section, still runs, a sad commentary on how women continue to be portrayed. Pukey depictions of women in the media, unfortunately, aren’t just the stuff of collectors. For more, check out the Flickr group ‘No Comment–A Salute to Ms. Magazine” , or the excellent Bitch Magazine, which goes way beyond parsing advertising, and bills itself as a “feminist response to pop culture.”
What do you think? Are we being too sensitive? Or is this stuff really as awful as it seems to me? Tell us what you see when you look at these ads.
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I remember the Women’s Center at my college had a No Comment bulletin board where people would post ads that degraded women. It was always full and always kind of shocking when you’d see all this imagery together.
I credit my mother with my feminist development as well. Something interesting I learned recently was that when the Sandinistas won the revolution in Nicaragua in 1979, one of the first things they did was outlaw advertising that objectified women. The law stayed in effect until they were voted out of power in 1990, but in my humble opinion there is far less sexist advertising here than I´ve seen in the United States.
Also very important and renowned for her work around sexist advertising is my friend´s mother, Jean Kilbourne.
http://www.jeankilbourne.com/
Paige, I was just thinking about the sexist depictions of women in advertising, and Jean Kilbourne, and her excellent presentation called “Killing Us Softly”, that I saw maybe (gulp) 20 years ago. Sadly, it does seem like the images today have gotten any better than in the past. (And I think probably have become worse.) I worry about that particularly as I drive around LA with the kids in the car, their little eyes looking up at all the billboards.
Have you seen the documentary Killing Us Softly? It is all about the poor imagery of women in advertising, I think there are two films. I saw them in college, over 20 years ago.
Yo, sister: This stuff is really as awful as it seems to be. That and every single music video I feel pelted by at the gym. Why is it that all the women are in their underwear on the gym screens, and every single man is fully dressed? No, I don’t want men in their underwear. I’d like to be real clear on this. Thanks, sister. You are spreading the self-respect here and that, as your mother taught you, is love itself.