The advertisement of women issue Essay

The message behind female products is that the male would reject the female if she has any physical defects such as skin complications, body odour or protruding stomach, bad breath and so on. on the other hand how males perceive females is exactly what is portrayed in adverts and they include sexy, beautiful, smooth skinned, stunning and extremely cute (Loree, 1977 Warren, 1978). With this statement, what we are concluding is that females are packaged in adverts as if the only reason for their existence was for males to consume them ( Rocard, 1968). If a man deems a woman beautiful and sexy, he returns the virtue by acting protective, romantic, respectful and lovely (Adams and Laurikietis, 1976).
Most magazines that advertised women issues in Britain pointed out that each edition they published contained stories or product advises related with enhancing the physical appearance of the female and also maximizing the effect of the same physical appearance on men (Millum, 1975). Advertisements in UK also at a point in time included the perception of narcissistic women about themselves. Narcissistic women are women who are fully aware that their physical appearance is appealing to men but they choose to focus on how they feel personally and not how men think about their physique. According to Loree, this kind of development reflects the advertising's contemporary response to the feminist re-identification of women's actual roles in society. Narcissistic women in this case could be referred to as liberated women. That is, they have been freed from the confines of men's perception about their physical appearance (Warren, 1978).
However the truth is that the women cannot be liberated. Referring back to the other dimension which women are portrayed which is domesticity (Flick, 1977), there are different ways in which the restriction of women to the house is amplified (Scott, 1976). The first one is that women are not capable of working outside their home. This was confirmed by the number of women in the labour force of every country in recent times (Van de Maele 1978). Even if they get the opportunity to work outside their home, they are usually perceived as not successful as men. In actual fact, women achieve success outside home but this kind of success is related more to the product than the efforts of advertisers to bridge the gap between image and social reality (Hentra and Pinckaers, 1976). For example, in tourist and recreation industries women are often employed as sex workers, receptionists and waitresses with the purpose of attracting male customers (Henstra and Pinckaers, 1976). The recreation industry also appeals to males who are fully employed in other sectors by offering them the opportunity to discover true femininity which includes sex appeal and young beauty. In reality marriage and parenthood are seen as virtues which are integral and vital to a woman's life than that of a man (McNeil, 1975). A research conducted by Tedesco (1974) showed that more than 50 % of women in the Television sector