If you take the time to watch, or look at advertisements today, you might notice that they are largely targeted towards women. In the 1960’s, men were seen as the breadwinners, while women took care of the house. This image is still portrayed today through ads. The vast majority of cleaning products advertisements are aimed at women. For example, this Swiffer ad has a woman proudly displaying one of their products, “He made it in the kitchen, and ate it in the dining room. With Swiffer Wet Jet, both floors were clean before he was.” Women are not always happy at being seen as the maid though, and yet, advertisers choose to direct their cleaning products toward them because if she doesn’t clean up his mess, who will? In an article on ctworkingmoms.com, marie5k says, “…no, I’m not happily dancing around my living room in them while I Swiffer out dust bunnies and coughed up cat hair balls. Nope, I’m hastily making my way around my house with that thing trying to break last week’s record of 13 minutes from one end of the house to the other”.
Another way women are portrayed as today are as sex objects. That’s right, I said objects rather than people. In many advertisements, parts of women’s bodies are shown to capture the viewer’s attention. Breaking their bodies into these distinguishable parts only serves to exemplify them more. The after effects only seem to reinforce the idea that women are here to serve men. In an article titled Sex and Relationships in the Media, the author points out that “Although women’s sexuality is no longer a taboo subject, many researchers question whether or not the blatant sexualization of women’s bodies in the media is liberating”. There is the idea that women need only concern themselves in attracting and sexually satisfying men.
Today, women serve many roles. The housewife, the perfect mom, the cook, the maid, the worker, the sex goddess, to name a few. We are expected to be every single one at any given moment. It’s time to choose one and stick to it.
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