About Me and my Blogs! (For Advertising and Society)
Hello all!
My name is K Leon and I am a student in the Department of Communications. I am a Chinese Canadian with a touch of Mexican blood, and take pleasure in spending time with friends and family. I look to one day achieve a career in the advertising industry, wish to one day be able to shake the hands of Armin Van Buuren, and enjoy long walks on the beach.
This section of the blog for Advertising and Society focuses on advertising and its effects on culture, gender, the economy, and vice versa. Advertising influences us, while we simultaneously influence advertising. The scary thing is is that the world lives off of it. Magazines, news, professional sports, certain websites, and anything in the entertainment business thrive off of advertising dollars as it is the main source of funding.
As you will read in the next few posts regarding Advertising and Society, you will begin to gain a brief overview about advertising, how it creates meaning, how it is used as a tool for communication, the key techniques towards the phenomenon, and how these techniques are applied to entice the audience.
There is much interest towards gender and the role of sex used as a means in advertising which is due in speculation to the corporate control over this industry. Women are continuously objectified in advertisements and presented as sexual and always also ready for sex.
This will be what the documentary sets out to explore, which is the battle of the sexes and men’s constant hold over women as they attempt to objectify and tame them.
Although women have seemed to come a long way since the 1960s, and have gained value and esteem within the corporate world, they continue to be viewed as subordinate and second to men. This is evidently displayed in advertisements still to this day of how women are portrayed as infantile and uncontrollable.
Yes, women such as those displayed in Sex and the City exert ‘power’ through buying products that normally a man would buy for her in past decades: shoes, jewellery, clothes, etc. Saying to the world that she no longer needs a man to shoe her, clothe her, and that she can do all these things herself – thus revealing an ‘empowered’ women. But is buying shoes and clothes really that empowering? By supporting the capitalist system that the men run, it is still farfetched to say that women are equals in this society that we live in. Women remain to be paid less than men in the same positions, and as women strive to obtain what the men have, they attempt to control and limit women by presenting the image of women as we see them in advertisements today. These women are sexy, thin, and ready for sex – in other words, a man’s ideal woman. Advertisements continue to cater towards the men in the society, as they hold the key to capitalism and a functional economy, not women.
This is what the blogs and documentary will be exploring for the next few weeks for my course in Advertising in Society. Hope you enjoy!
~ Leon
