Historically Sexist Portrayals of Women in Advertising

In Lana F. Rakow's article "Feminist Approaches to Popular Culture: Giving Patriarchy It's Due" Rakow bursts headlong into a discussion of the many types of Feminism and the different approaches that make up Feminism. In her introduction, Rakow introduces us to the two "bodies of literature". The first being "raw material" and the second being a "historical cannon". Rakow then proceeds to discuss the four different approaches take. These four approaches are Providers, Traditionalists, Progressives and Radicals.

Later in her writing, Rakow discusses "The Images and Representations Approach" This approach focuses on how women are portrayed in popular culture.
Rakow discusses how women's most important relationship to popular culture has been providing its major images. This reminds me of the Dove commercials where the narrator asks the women and sometimes girls what they would change about themselves to make themselves appear prettier. Some of the girls focus on their face asking for freckles or for their hair to be a different color. While other focus on the rest of their body, asking to be taller or shorter  everyone is beautiful.


Because of society and the culture we live in, we spend lots of time focusing on the things that we don't like rather than focusing on things that we do like. One thing that personally has always bothered me is the way that women are portrayed in media. Because of the way women are portrayed in media and by society, most women are very insecure about their body. They believe that they aren't tall enough, skinny enough, have large enough breasts or shapely enough bottoms.

Looking from a historical aspect, women have often been portrayed as weak and submissive to men. Specifically, look at the ad to the left. Clearly no product is even being sold but rather the propaganda that women are inferior to men and have no other purpose but to serve men is being precipitated.

The woman, who also appears to be lacking clothing of any type, is in a very submissive position. These two things would be very humiliating to most people. The woman's position of lacking any articles of clothing and being almost flat on the ground in front of the shoe represents how at the time this advertisement was printed women were portrayed by the media as being subservient to the men in society. This portrayal of women is extremely degrading to women in any frame of mind.






This second ad here asks the question "Is it always illegal to kill a woman?" First, this is a horribly sexist question. Is this ad saying that a women's life is worth less than a man? For the most part I would have to say yes, yes this advertisement portrays women as being worth less than a man.

This ad is horrifying by any stretch of the imagination and should raise the eyebrows of anyone who sees it. This ad features both a man and a woman. It appears that the man is yelling at the woman, probably about something that the woman did. The woman appears to not be responsive to what the man is saying as she is holding her head up in what appears to be an indignant manner. Then the question is posed on top "Is it always illegal to KILL a woman" This ad appears to be trying to sell postage meters. Of which I know not how postage meters connects to being able to ask the question of whether or not you can kill a woman. This ad is indicative of what feminist's talk about when they discuss how horribly women have been treated by culture, society and the media in both the past and present.


These advertisements back up the feminist point of view portrayed by Rakow in that woman have been mistreated by society, culture and the media through history. Rakow makes great points through out her work in elaborating on feminism and discussing the different types of feminism. However while modern advertisement has largely removed such sexist advertisement from our culture and media some examples of sexist advertisement exist to present times. Hopefully sexism will eventually be completely removed form our media and culture so that men and women become truly equal.