Advertising’s image of woman

Publicity is, in the contemporary societies, a group of techniques, strategies, uses, forms and context of communication oriented to persuade people to do something. The obvious purpose of the advertising communication is to gain the attraction of the addressee to an advertisement, an object, a brand or an idea, stimulate his/her wish and provoke an action or a conduct oriented to the acquisition of the announced product. However, publicity is not only a communicative tool dedicated to the stimulus of the attitudes of buying and the promotion of the consumption habits; but also an efficient tool of ideological transmission. For this reason, everything that appears on television, newspapers, magazines, etc. determine a conduct role for everybody, especially for women.

The advertising model of beauty that publicity sells us is based on perfection: beautiful women, with no imperfections, super skinny, etc. As the educator Jean Kilbourne said in her documental Slim Hopes: “Advertising media adversely impact women's body image, which can lead to unhealthy behavior as women and girls strive for the ultra-thin body idealized by the media” (1995). Moreover, current data indicates the mentioned before, since today’s fashion model weigh 23% less than the average female and a young woman between the ages of 18-34 has a 1% chance of being as thin as a supermodel. Therefore, the eating disorders have increased a 200% since 2001 (2007). In addition, models like Kate Moss help the increasing of these disorders with messages like “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”.

Concerning the evolution of women’s role, we can observe that the woman has suffered many changes over the years and therefore her image in advertising. Fifty years ago, the publicity addressed to women defined the main role of them: housework, children and cater for the needs of the husband. For instance, slogans like “A woman is only a woman but a good cigar is a smoke”, “Show her it’s a man’s world!”, “Women don’t leave the Kitchen”, “It’s designed for you, but built for your husband” or “So the harder a wife works, the cuter she looks!” demonstrate the ideology of that society, regarding the female gender. Instead, the woman’s image has improved over the years until becoming into independent, working and fighter beings. Although there are still advertisements which remind us that it has changed enough (2011). For example, in 2009, the brand Madison Avenue launched a range of cooking products whose slogan was “A woman’s best friend”.

To put everything in a nutshell, the publicity is a tool that teaches conduct roles (besides selling). At present, more than a 70% of advertisements are targeted at females. In these advertisements, women possess a standard of beauty difficult to achieve by the average female and may give rise to eating disorders. A few years back, besides standards of beauty established, the advertisements showed a female specific role controlled by a society led by men. In spite of the fact that there continues to be an old advertising, most of the present publicity exhibits a renovated an independent woman.