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Gender Exploitation In Fashion Advertising

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Gender exploitation is prevalent in the media today, particularly through fashion advertisements. The intent of this study is to analyses the roles men and women play in society, how they appear, and who they are portraying to be. The word its self; ‘advertising’ can have several definitions today, in the 21st century. There is no single generally acceptable definition of it. Initially the meaning proposed by the Oxford Dictionary describes ‘advertisement’ to be: “A notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event or publicizing a job vacancy. A person or thing regarded as a means of recommending something” (Oxford Dictionary, 2017). But from a field of visual communication Williamson (1988) states that we …show more content…

Throughout the researched material there were a couple of particularly interesting authors found expressing their thoughts on the matter. Advertising is more than just promoting something; it is a tool, which has enough power to manipulate peers with any adverts (Ford, 2006). This component controls our views, and persuades us to live the life they want us to live. The present study is used to research previous investigations that analyzed the portrayal of women in fashion advertising. This research paper will analyze visual rhetoric through four different advertisements. The adverts that were selected for analysis were chosen accordingly in terms of explicit sexual content. The technique and analysis implements Mullen and Fishers (2004) visual analysis, which they modified from Foss’s practices for visual rhetorical analysis (Foss, 1994; Foss & Kanengieter, …show more content…

The lifestyle presented in these advertisements feature a ‘model’, extravagant accommodation signified by goods, leisure, travel, sex, and especially, wealth and luxury. All these features are presented by visuals of sexually violent women, vehicles, luxurious locations, the finest accessories, and remarkable journeys. Yet, without the existence of women in the advertisements, such a lifestyle no longer signifies ‘machismo’. The research paper argues that women in the advertisements are objectified as sexual items in an artificial, glamorous

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