Advertisements have always been known to depict young, pretty, and skinny women to an unrealistically level especially due to the development of photoshop. They create an image that tricks society to believe that this is how women should look and hence creates anxieties for women who don’t have these qualities. In the end, they utilize these anxieties to create a demand for their products. Furthermore, women are often used as sexualized objects in male-targeted advertisements to catch attention. There is a Ted-talk that especially talks about this topic:

In recent years, the media has learned its way to constructing an idea of empowerment rather than sexualizing women in their advertisements to earn approval from women consumers. This shift is due to the increasing number of women recognizing the problems of the “ideal women” image that has been created.  That advertisement, through abandoning the traditional beauty standards and gender stereotypes of women that have been constructed by other discourses, advocates for feminist independence. However, because selling product is the fundamental use of advertisements, often advertisements with an empowerment theme cannot completely abandon the beauty standards and gender stereotypes or they would create a new quality to trigger consumers’ demand. A paper studied how SK-II, a Japanese luxury skincare brand, uses empowerment as a theme in its advertisement. In the end, the paper concludes although SK-II shoots a strong, independent-looking female model that rebelled against the traditional gender stereotypes of women, however, it creates an idea that this empowerment is achieved through the usage of their product which leads to flawless skin. This leads to more demand for their product and anxiety to achieve better skin among women (Huimin and Tan).

Nike: What are girls made of?

 

This advertisement starts with featuring a girl singing a famous Russian song where it says girls are made of flowers, rings, gossip, and marmalade, which all follow the traditional gender stereotypes. Then, the video followed by female athletics pops up and the lyrics changed to girls are made of iron, striving self-dedication, etc. are described to empowered women. However, at the same time, this advertisement also only features young, abled, muscular women. Through creating this new discourse of what girls should be like, Nike successfully embedded a new standard for women, an image that is sporty, in good shape, and strong. This could make women who are watching this advertisement feel they aren’t powerful, or they don’t fit the description of a girl when they lack any of these qualities, and this leads to a need for them to become like those women featured in this advertisement, including the purchase of Nike’s product.

These are only a few examples of how advertisement utilizes women’s empowerment as a theme to sell the product. Although we see a shift where women are less being objectified and there’s an increase in an advertisement that features strong and independent women, it is important to understand what kind of messages are sent out when receiving advertisements, because root, advertisement is made to create a need for their product.

Here is a link to another blog that shares some great advertisements that aim to change gender stereotypes about women: https://girls.buzz/blogs/10-empowering-women-advertisements/

Bibliography:
  • Xu, Huimin, and Yunying Tan. “Can Beauty Advertisements Empower Women? A Critical Discourse Analysis of the SK-II’s ‘Change Destiny’ Campaign.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies, vol. 10, no. 2, Feb. 2020, pp. 176+. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A614079652/LitRC?u=east55695&sid=ebsco&xid=3bce9f42. Accessed 7 Nov. 2022.