As I said to other people introducing this concept, look at these:



Most men don't look like this either. The focus on women "in pop culture" is not correct. In fact I think it might even be part of the cause because it only gives the subject more attention. Especially because these initiatives are generally to 'save' and to 'protect' women - which is a demeaning and sexist standpoint.

Advertisement is showing EVERYTHING skewed. We shouldn't tell people that women in ads are fake, we should tell people that EVERYTHING in ads is fake.

edit: replaced a huge image with a smaller one

Edited by snader - 16 September 2011 at 10:19am

@snader: of course advertising depicts everything skewed. However, men do not get the same treatment as women, not by a longshot.

The point you're making is actually discussed in the video much better than I can put it. I guess it was too long didn't watch?

Also, "because these initiatives are generally to 'save' and to 'protect' women" <- what an overgeneralizing and patronizing statement... I guess any kind of attempt to enlighten people about the sexism in our society is pro-women and anti-men? As if men don't suffer from sexism when they're not allowed to cry or share feelings?

No, my point is that these types of videos paint a picture of women needing saving, so it would be anti-women sexism. Are women not equal in willpower and rational thinking as men?

I think he is trying to say that instead of 'women needing saving' it should be 'mankind needing saving'.

I try not to care because I believe there is no way to stop this all. We can only educate people (kids) better, but not prevent the world of showcasing 'beauty'. We all add to it continiously, by sharing our thoughts of beauty with the world. Honestly, this girl has better features than my girlfriend.

The thesis here is (or should be) that sex sells. Sexualization of men, women, and inanimate objects is a huge driving force in advertising (a point she starts to hit upon in the second half of the second video).

There are unrealistic ideals for both genders. Here’s an example of how she’s made this argument into something that is far too black-and-white:
“Men don’t live in a world where their bodies are routinely judged.”

Is this an attempt at humor? (Heterosexual) women will always judge the bodies of men, and vice versa. We’re mammals that reproduce sexually, judging the physical attractiveness of the opposite sex (or sex that we're attracted to, anyway) is pretty universal.

But wait, she says, it’s different for men! They’re depicted powerful, whereas women are coy and innocent.

That’s the ideal. The different sexes have different ideals that have evolved relative to their sexually dimorphic traits. That doesn’t make any ideal any more right or true or beneficial, both are harmful, exaggerated, and unrealistic. Men shouldn't be required to meet the beefy macho ideal anymore than women should be required to meet the submissive and naive ideal.

Ads with thin women are countered by plenty of men in advertising with rippling muscles and zero body fat. There are plenty of ads where men are ‘dismembered’, chopping off the heads and leaving only the pecs or ripped abs.


She complains that real women aren’t represented by the scrawny ideal:
“but we literally never see that body type as acceptable or desirable in advertising or anywhere in the popular culture”
Really? Literally never? Anywhere?


Obviously these types of ads are greatly outnumbered (and in response to) the ads featuring the unrealistic ideal, but my point is that the argument being presented makes sweeping generalizations and turns this into a very black-and-white issue.

But there does seem to be a rising trend in seeing ‘plus-size’ models, or ‘real’ women in advertising (and let's hope it continues). There’s also a rising trend in commercials featuring a dopey husband archetype, countered by the clever and disapproving wife. The negative gender stereotypes go both ways.

Obviously, the objectification and sexualization of women is undeniable, but the root of the problem is not misogyny, it’s the shallow advertising (which reflects our shallow culture) that tells everyone: you’re not attractive enough, if you want to attract a mate then you need our product. Xenadrine and other diet pills are marketed at men as much as women. Personality is devalued in comparison to physical attractiveness, this is true of both sexes.

As for the runway models that look like holocaust survivors: that extreme does not represent the ideal of beauty held by society at large. I personally don’t know anyone who would respond positively to that figure: it’s sickly and naturally evokes the response “this human is unhealthy.” That figure is represented by high fashion, not advertising generally. I'm not denying that it's a problem affecting young girls who are exposed to the trend, I'm just saying that it isn't an accurate representation of society's ideal of beauty, but a rather extreme caricature of that ideal.

So I have to back snader here. There are unrealistic and harmful ideals bombarding everyone, regardless of whether you have a pee-pee or a hoo-hoo. It stems with a root problem in the inadequacies felt by the ego, and the concern with only the most superficial aspects of your fellow humans, not in a specific gender. Making this a gender-specific issue misses the root of the problem, and addresses only a single manifestation of the sickness.




Edited by cure - 17 September 2011 at 11:30am

@cure

I agree with most of what you said. And the video does too.


There are unrealistic ideals for both genders. Here’s an example of how she’s made this argument into something that is far too black-and-white:
“Men don’t live in a world where their bodies are routinely judged.”

Of course it happens. Is it so bad, though, that a man will ever be denied a (non-fashion-industry related) job because he's not pretty enough? It's happened to me and friends of mine more than once. And I'm an illustrator, not a fashion model. But maybe Greece is more sexist than other places (doubt it though).
 
That having been said, all my male friends complain about formal suit requirements on the job, and all my female friends complain about compulsory make-up on the job. Things are sh*t for everyone. That's no reason to stop pointing out the scale of it, though, I don't think.

Is this an attempt at humor? (Heterosexual) women will always judge the bodies of men, and vice versa. We’re mammals that reproduce sexually, judging the physical attractiveness of the opposite sex (or sex that we're attracted to, anyway) is pretty universal.

It is not an attempt at humor, though. Heterosexual women and homosexual men do judge men's appearance and bodies. They do. But is it all about sex? What about being undervalued INSTANTLY when you are a woman who hits 50? What about widespread offensive notions such as 'cougar', or sexual women being sluts whereas sexual men are playboys? What about beauty playing a role in how employable you are as a woman? What about beauty being a measurable factor in jury determining guilt in rape cases?*

( * Yeah, it's been proven, and it doesn't speak well for our "shallow" (read: sexist - I didn't say misogynist, just sexist is enough) society. The 'more handsome' a guy who's commited rape is, and the 'less pretty' a woman is who's been raped, the less of a chance (statistically proven) there is of him being convicted of the rape he commited. Us people have been conditioned to immediately assume that pretty guys don't rape, and if they did they wouldn't be raping ugly chicks. Which is bull, humans don't work that way.)


But wait, she says, it’s different for men! They’re depicted powerful, whereas women are coy and innocent.
That’s the ideal. The different sexes have different ideals that have evolved relative to their sexually dimorphic traits. That doesn’t make any ideal any more right or true or beneficial, both are harmful, exaggerated, and unrealistic. Men shouldn't be required to meet the beefy macho ideal anymore than women should be required to meet the submissive and naive ideal.

Agreed! So much agreed! That way, my trans male friends (female to male trans guys) wouldn't be facing the overwhelming racism and transphobia that they're not "male enough", and my non-trans male friends who are gay or just straight but don't like violence or sports or whatever, wouldn't be ridiculed by other guys at school.

Ads with thin women are countered by plenty of men in advertising with rippling muscles and zero body fat. There are plenty of ads where men are ‘dismembered’, chopping off the heads and leaving only the pecs or ripped abs.
I don't know if they are countered exactly, because most ads depicting guys in positions of power (almost no coy, vulnerable or silly poses, even for little boys) are telling boys and men that that's an attitude to emulate, that the world belongs to men who are like that. *Of course* I believe that this is detrimental for guys! Not the zero body fat bit, so much, as the blatant disregard for other ways of being a man (sensitive, nerdy, bashful, undecisive, pick one). That's what I'm about, mostly, with these ads.

She complains that real women aren’t represented by the scrawny ideal:
“but we literally never see that body type as acceptable or desirable in advertising or anywhere in the popular culture”
Really? Literally never? Anywhere?
The dove commercial? Are you kidding me, this is awesome, and everyone is raving about these! Feminists more than the rest. It's even mentioned in the video. And I can give you maybe 8 more examples (because I work in advertising). That's I'm talking about, though: if it's just two or three ads that are *famous* for being positive role models, in the midst of a *sea* of sexist, homophobic, misogynist and male stereotyping ads, then we're not on the right track are we?

Obviously these types of ads are greatly outnumbered (and in response to) the ads featuring the unrealistic ideal, but my point is that the argument being presented makes sweeping generalizations and turns this into a very black-and-white issue.
Don't know about sweeping generalizations. Do you think I like it being like this? I don't. Do you think I (and probably the respected professor in the video) don't constantly look for ads that prove me wrong? There are so few. The sweeping majority are pretty awful, and pointing this out isn't a sweeping generalization, but being down-to-earth.

But there is a rising trend in seeing ‘plus-size’ models, or ‘real’ women in advertising. There’s also a rising trend in commercials featuring a dopey husband archetype, countered by the clever and disapproving wife. She fails to mention how men are constantly being portrayed as bumbling fools in every other advert on TV that features a couple.
Yep! The increase in plus-size model ads are a fantastic result of decent people in advertising, also brought about by years of feminist men and women  demanding more reasonable standards for female beauty. Fashion designers are still assholes about it, though, grr. She does fail to mention the bumbling fool stereotype. I don't disagree in the least with what you're pointing out!! Being pro-feminist doesn't mean being anti-men (who the hell is giving people these ideas?) and I think it's a very patronizing stereotype to depict men who become idiots in front of women. It's disgusting, and depicts guys as helpless in front of the almighty Sex that Women are keeping bottled up and keeping to themselves. It's demeaning for both genders, and especially guys. Gender and feminist studies are complaining about binary gender stereotypes *all* the time.

Obviously, the objectification and sexualization of women is undeniable, but the root of the problem is not misogyny, it’s the shallow advertising (which reflects our shallow culture) that tells everyone: you’re not attractive enough, if you want to attract a mate then you need our product. Xenadrine and other diet pills are marketed at men as much as women. Personality is devalued in comparison to physical attractiveness, this is true of both sexes.
Do guys get the "your body is disgusting and you should smell like roses all the time" thing? I hope they don't and I wish women didn't either. Vaginal douche? Why? It's bad for the vagina. Vaginas smell like they do. If someone doesn't like how a (clean lol) vagina smells, maybe they don't like vaginas in the first place? Has anyone who complains about vaginas being smelly smelled a penis? It's usually pretty bad, even when circumsized. Does anyone market penis perfumes and scents? Nope. Why are hairy women's legs disgusting? They're perfectly natural that way. 90% of all cosmetic surgery is marketed towards women. Would it have, if men weren't secure that even if they're not handsome they can still function in society without being cripplingly undervalued? Do you think women who have cosmetic surgery have a genetic fetish for having cosmetic surgery? Nope. It's social, it's pressure from outside.

Even products that do the exact same thing in the exact same way (such as deodorants) are marketed in disturbingly dissimilar ways towards either gender. As in, really crazy stuff, like women's are totally pink and sensitive and men's are totally aggressive and macho. Seriously? Over deodorants, come on people. There's an acclaimed website run by two sociology professors, called sociological images:

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/

and it has too many examples for me to recount. Go check it out, since you obviously care about the subject! I guarantee you, it's not skewed or black and white, and it's always an interesting read.

As for the runway models that look like holocaust survivors: that extreme does not represent the ideal of beauty held by society at large. I personally don’t know anyone who would respond positively to that figure: it’s sickly and naturally evokes the response “this human is unhealthy.” That figure is represented by high fashion, not advertising generally. I'm not denying that it's a problem affecting young girls who are exposed to the trend, I'm just saying that it isn't an accurate representation of society's ideal of beauty, but a rather extreme caricature of that ideal.
Of course it isn't an accurate representation. But it's tolerated, isn't it? Except in Spain, yay Spain. And it's not just high fashion. I've worked in male and female magazines, and the amount of airbrushing that goes on in female models and especially celebrities is just unbelievable. I've worked for this particular magazine:
 
http://bp3.blogger.com/_c6zEjA0AKKQ/R01xeRgnkjI/AAAAAAAACes/DzJr5znM8Wg/s1600-h/DespoinaVandi.jpg

And the left is what she really looks like, which is actually FINE for a 50-year old heavy smoker. I like the photo on the left. She's got character, she's a real person. (She's a popular greek singer). But if you were to compare yourself with her airbrushed cover, don't tell me you wouldn't come short. All 50-year old women would.

But all we get to judge ourselves by ARE airbrushed covers. At least the majority of women do.
My sister is anorexic, and I've got anorexic friends. It's not difficult to be an anorexic girl. It is difficult and very very rare to be an anorexic guy. Why? Social pressure. It isn't in the genes.

So I have to back snader here. There are unrealistic and harmful ideals bombarding everyone, regardless of whether you have a pee-pee or a hoo-hoo. It stems with a root problem in the inadequacies felt by the ego, and the concern with only the most superficial aspects of your fellow humans, not in a specific gender. Making this a gender-specific issue misses the root of the problem, and addresses only a single manifestation of the sickness.

It's not even about penises and vaginas. Trans and intersex people (who may or may not have 'the opposite' genitalia) are grossly mistreated as well, because our societies are very, very deeply sexist.
And to be clear, by "sexist" I mean they attribute different characteristics to each gender, and then call it "biology". It's not, it's grossly exaggerated if it's there at all. Men can be nurturing, women can be aggressive, and pink was a male color up until 1939 ( http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2831/was-pink-originally-the-color-for-boys-and-blue-for-girls ) The way we treat humans according to their gender is as far from egalitarian as could be.

The inadequacies, you mention, that are felt by the ego are not innate. Nobody feels the need for penis enlargement or breast augmentation if they grew up in the jungle. These are social constructs. And I'm not saying "men are causing it" or any unfair statement to that effect, but I do think society as a whole is making men and women very, very insecure, for no good reason, and with an extra focus on women's bodies and men's success level, money, etc.

It's all I'm saying.


Edited by neofotistou - 17 September 2011 at 12:15pm

If you don't want to reply that's fine, I'm not exactly going to miss out on the wisdom of the ages.

But why is it that you feel the need to give me the holier than thou treatment? I haven't said anything all that different than Snader or tinc said, I'm just being more blunt about it.


edit:

Furthermore, I have a gripe with something you said.





Read up a bit of history.

The "how" and the "what" has changed. Nothing more.

I'm sorry you don't like to hear that people care more about how someone looks than how nice their personality is. But that's how it's been since the dawn of time. Humanity has and always will strive for vanity, today, tomorrow, in the year 2525.


Edited by greenraven - 17 September 2011 at 2:40pm

I know. She just made it seem like vanity is a recent invention with the whole "jungle" remark. I just pointed out that vanity has been around for long long time before the days of the devil's picture box. XD

As long as it is clear that its social pressure that's bad, not advertising (that is just a form of social pressure)

@neo: We all go trough a period where we question greenravens age. Live with it :(

greenraven - Because we all know that your sanity is a non-existant entity.


neofotistou - I am no more patronizing than you are. I do acknowledge that sexism exists, however I do not accept it - I try my best to get rid of it. One way I try to do that is to try and weed out red herrings, so we can focus on the real issues.

Yes, I do (in part) blame these women that keep calling attention to this subject for the status they are given in today's culture. Because these movements, although noble of intent, keep the statistics skewed to show women as the weak sex.

If you look at actual real world examples, things are not as misogynistic as they are presented. As Cure said, "Ads with thin women are countered by plenty of men in advertising with rippling muscles and zero body fat."


I'm seeing a roughly equal amount of men and female nakedness. But hey, roughly looking isn't really proper, so let's count. 51 men, of which 24 are sexualized by not wearing a shirt and 5 are sexualized via pose/captivity. There are 78 women, of which 30 are sexualized by not/barely wearing a top and 8 via pose/captivity.

Some really quick statistics let me know that more than half of the men, and less than half the women in these ads get sexualized. Yes, there are more sexualized images of woman, but that's due to the larger total amount of women in these ads.

Also take a look at these 2 images (not ads, but covers were also repeatedly mentioned in the vid, and give clear datapoints)


32 men are not wearing a shirt, 5 have an open/pulled up shirt to show their abs and 7 wear a suit. The rest wear 'normal' clothes that could do for walking in the street.

34 women show more skin than clothes, 5 show a bit of belly or wear rather short skirts/pants, and 8 wear a red-carpet dress. The rest wear 'normal' clothes.

So, yes, there is a bit of skew towards women showing skin in these covers, but not nearly as bad as the video makes it out to be.

One statement from the youtube videos I'd like to take a closer look at is this: "one third of all the women who are murdered in our country are killed by their male partners, their husbands"
Sounds horrible. And of course, it is horrible. But what does that figure mean without context? Nothing. So here's some: about 1 in 10 male homicides were commited by their wives.

OMG! Men are over 3 times more likely to kill their wife than vice versa!
Well, no. Because over 75% of all homicide victims are male. (my tangential speculation: this due to gang wars, crime, etc). So based on that, husbands and wives kill eachother roughly the same.

Roughly, though, is only roughly. So I dug up some actual numbers - I couldn't find homicide, so domestic violence will have to do. Every year, 0.8 million males report this, versus 1.3 million for women.
OMG! Men abuse their wives over 50% more than vice versa!
Not really. Many more men (something of 45% vs 25%) than women do not report abuse, for several reasons. One of them being that they are often not believed. One of them being that it makes them feel weak.

So who says that the actual, unknown, figures for male and females aren't nearly the same? In fact, there have been over 500 studies, analyses and investigations "which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners."

I wanted to point this out because she throws it out as a snappy fact, a quick shocker. I'm sure she has several more of those facts - facts which are completely true, but lose their strength once you start to analyze them.

That other blog/site you pointed us at has some false evidence as well. Take http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/05/18/stick-figures-and-stick-figures-who-parent/ for instance. First of all, this is the oldest shape of bike that's made, only later was a womens variety invented (with a lower bar for the skirt) - this is also the reason it's considered a 'mans'bike. Secondly, this bike looks more variety of 'special' bikes such as racing bikes and mountain bikes, so it can represent those as well, while the 'womans' bike can not. Third, there are more bikes sold with the high bar than with the low. And lastly (though irrelevantly) this double triangle construction is stronger than the 'womans' bicycle.

As for the person on the bike: look around you on the streets. How many men wear skirts and dresses? How many women wear pants? There just are more people with pants.


apologies for any spelling errors, it's 7:05AM here and i've yet to sleep.

@snader

I never called you patronizing. I called your *statement* patronizing, and the fact that you can't tell the difference and misinterpret it as a personal attack seems to be the reason why you take it upon yourself to prove that pointing out sexism is the same as being man-hating.

Spoiler alert: it is not. Sexism f**ks up men and women alike, not to mention intersex people, trans people and non-straight people.

Your screencaps are not a peer reviewed analysis OR a randomized sample, OR an acceptable sample in any scientific way. This wikipedia article, however, is full of such things. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence )

I never talked about misogyny, I'm talking about sexism, and how it has real-life consequences. You're overreacting to things I haven't said, and are attacking straw-man arguments.

Even though your sample isn't representative (so you can attack my whole critique of them by saying "hey, these aren't representative of all ads"), I'll dignify the screenshots with a reply.

So let's see. Do you see any of the men in feminine poses? Do you see any women in non-feminine poses? This holds true for EVERY single one of the magazine covers as well.

Numerous problems in these ads for me. It's probably going over your head that the very first one, where two people are beating on "corrupt officials", has two *men* being beaten to death. Because corrupt officials only have to be men. Is this ok with you?

Also, even in bondage, these guys are looking totally in control of the situation. (The one with the man tied in a chair IS however an unfair powerplay and I don't like it, for the same reason you don't. It doesn't look like consensual sex, it looks like a vengeful act. However, the woman is STILL in a super-feminine pose, looking over her shoulder in a way that both her butt and boobs are showing. Do you see any men in that pose?) The really disturbing ads where guys are pinning down a woman don't do anything to make you mad? The one ad where a woman is pinning down a man, he's looking completely in control of the situation, and is even clutching another woman's thigh. There's three women in that picture (there's a status symbol if I ever saw one), and the man doesn't seem threatened at all. I wouldn't want him to be threatened. I'm not advocating some sort of 'revenge' (like you seem to think I am). I'm merely advocating equality. And there isn't any: gender differences (if that's even a real thing) are portrayed 100 times more exaggerated in the media, and that's that.


And please answer, in your own words, how many guys you see standing like this:

And if you think it is a pose that women routinely strike (because it's in their genes)

Or stand in these poses and look sexy for the camera, if you prefer. And also, if you'd be so kind, be really really underweight for your height:


Your statistics are so skewed they're falling down! OMG it's like you took them off men's rights (read: anti-female) websites! I've read lots of those, and they still fail to impress.

The wikipedia article above, has this to say:

Estimates show that 248 of every 1,000 females and 76 of every 1,000 males are victims of physical assault and/or rape committed by their spouses.^[128] A 1997 report says significantly more men than women do not disclose the identity of their attacker.^[129] There is no evidence however that male victims are more likely to under-report than female victims. In fact, men tend to over-estimate their partner’s violence and under-estimate their own, while women do the reverse.^[130] A 2009 study showed that there was greater acceptance for abuse perpetrated by females than by males.^[131] Several studies have confirmed that women’s physical violence towards intimate male partners is often in self-defense (DeKeseredy et al. 1997;^[132] Hamberger et al. 1994;^[133] Swan & Snow 2002, 301;^[134] Muelleman & Burgess 1998, 866^[135]).

My own opinion is that domestic violence and rape is awful, whether men or women are concerned. But the raw numbers (without speculations on your part, or impressive but false statistics) are painting a bad picture for women. Do you want it to go on being like that? I'd like gendered violence to go towards zero for both genders. You want it to go up for males so you can prove you're right to dislike feminists.

If you think that stating the facts is somehow attacking men's rights, and that reducing sexism is a loss for the male gender, then by all means, be aggressive about it.

Also, in that bike post on soc images? The comments immediately rectify this. That's the cool thing with open forums, you can state your opinion.



Edited by neofotistou - 18 September 2011 at 4:55am

Ok, I think we can all agree at this point that this topic has been derailed and has spiraled horribly out of control. This isn't about ads anymore, this is a whole mess on social commentary.

There's no such thing as equality and there never will be. On top of that there is no consistent factor to base anything on. Today an angry man will beat his wife, tomorrow a drug addicted woman will claw her husband in delirium. Someone will always be in power and always commit horrible acts, and it doesn't have to be a man or a woman, it can be anyone.






Actually I do (minus the high heels). Sometimes when I'm bored and I'm just standing around I like to sway my hips back and forth. And no I'm not joking, I'm being completely serious.

Besides, that pose isn't supposed to show everyday practicality. It's supposed to be artistically inciting, and it is. Like hitchhiking, you won't get any rides sitting on the side of the road.



Now then, let me ask you a question. Why do people become prostitutes? Why do people become porn stars? It's not like a military draft where people are forced. People do it of their own free will. Why?

Now you are teasing, suggesting that 16 is a bad age while obviously he is 16

Ok we're not talking about sex slaves who are kept in dungeons of third world countries whose names no one can pronounce. And yes there are angry pimps in first world countries that like to "smack them hos" because of some ego power trip.

No, we're talking about legitimate (as legitimate as these things get) high-end, upscale, fancy corporate brothels where there's a big burly goon named Tony who breaks your f**king kneecaps the moment the lady says "no".

Like you said "few options", which means they have options.

The point I'm trying to make is that some people see the system for what it is and instead of moaning about it they choose to take advantage of it and work with it.

If sex sells then sell it for all it's worth.



There are two sides to every coin and a silver lining in every cloud. Just because something seems bad to you doesn't mean you have to destroy it wholesale, sometimes a little tweaking to the formula is all that's required.

Are men and women portrayed unnaturally sexy? Fine. Take it down a notch and portray them naturally sexy. Where's the problem?

I enjoy the naked human body (both male and female mind you) as a work of art. I will not apologize for it to the squeamish masses.

You know, your bizarre and passive aggressive hatred towards me is clearly blinding your judgment as you've obviously missed the part where I said to tone it down. It wouldn't kill you to look at something I say once in a while without your bias mindset of tearing down ever word I say. I swear it's like you're just trying to agitate me on purpose at every chance you get.

I was going to say "no it's the same over here" but then I realized we're from the same country. Personally, I've got a womens bike, and used it quite a lot for my paper route a few years ago. I still own only that one, but nowadays I usually borrow my dad's mountain bike because he hardly uses it anyway.

Hahaha, like a single still is enough to come to that conclusion. Not only can you in no way verify that that is the only male in the image, but using one chosen frame is not how you come up with a statistic.
I'd refrain from posting clearly flawed statistics. It makes you lose a lot of credibility.



It should be said that your samples (besides "jeans ad") are flawed because you looked up the covers of the same magazine, Men's/Women's Health. Choosing a single magazine to represent your argument is just as bad as choosing a single image.