text: Ioana Butaru

illustration: Larisa Petcut

Sneak Peek: "What does the advertising we see educate us today? That the woman is inferior to the man, that she must cook, be sexy, that the woman is a sexual object. Moreover, advertisements cultivate the belief that only men are strong, brave and able to make money."

Înainte să trecem la articolul în sine, am să vă las aici un articol ce merită pe deplin atenția voastră dacă vă pasionează acest subiect. 🙂

 

What does sexist advertising actually mean and how can we spot it?

Sexist advertising can be identified by answering a few questions:

• What is the purpose of placing the person in the advertisement: to demonstrate how to use the advertised product or service, or simply to capture attention?
• If we were to reverse the roles (replace men with women or vice versa, being shown in exactly the same pose), would it seem out of the ordinary?
• Does it promote some stereotype that women behave one way and men another?

Advertising is everywhere and we cannot avoid it even if we wanted to, and today its role is to attract and sell the image, the text, the color, the shape, any element that would target the eyes of the buyer. Nothing wrong with promoting your product, right? The problem comes when, in the rush for money and fame, industry insiders turn to scandal to gain attention. Whether I'm walking down the street, watching TV, on the phone, in magazines, for as long as I can remember I've witnessed a major denigration of women in commercials, and I can't deny that being just a kid, my perception of the concepts of equality was distorted.

That is precisely why I know that I am neither the first nor the last person who was unconsciously tried to implement completely wrong stereotypes. It is important to make them aware and to understand that the message they send is in no way a reflection of reality, as well as to take care of the impact they can have on children and teenagers.

 

Sexist manifestation in advertising

Although sexist advertisements are not new - on the contrary, the history of advertising is a history of clichés representing women -, for the society in which we live, their sanctioning is new. Likewise, sexism in advertising can affect all genders, but women are most often the ones affected.

Objectification – when a person is reduced to the level of an object, i.e. treated as decoration, to attract attention. We see this especially in the case of women who appear in advertisements.

e.g. if someone wants to advertise a door, a woman in a lascivious position will necessarily appear near it; or if we have advertising for pasta, it will be put on a woman's body, etc.

 

Nudity in advertising

e.g. posing a person in underwear to advertise the product is not considered sexist because the person's body has direct attribution with it, which for the most part cannot be claimed as being used in any other way.

On the other hand, if the person advertising the lingerie is in provocative, sexually suggestive positions (a woman in lingerie showing her breasts or lying in bed/on the floor with her legs up, etc.), it is already considered that we are in the presence of a fact of objectification of the person, through which he is used as a sexual tool, with the aim of attracting more attention to the product.

The same situation when we talk about the advertising of some body cleaning products.

 

Top of shame

Here are some of the sexiest commercials ever made:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N-UjH_MNM8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbOf_IlUpkk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhAtEgJiJCw

 

The situation in Romania

In our country, at least one of the scenarios below certainly applies:

presents the woman or man as a sexual object, in humiliating or degrading situations, violent and offensive to human dignity;
promotes sexist stereotypes for discriminatory purposes, maintaining the traditional perception of women as weak, vulnerable and dependent, with an inferior social position.

See why I say this:

At the beginning of 2020, there was a first for Romania: the Alka company was fined by the National Council for Combating Discrimination for sexist advertisements. In the ad campaign, several women enjoyed biscuits, wafers & co, in a highly sexualized form.
Recently, a civic group launched a petition against another sexist ad for Csíki Sör beer. In the commercial clip, several female employees of the company, with their names and positions displayed, undress while drinking beer.

 

So how sexist is Romanian advertising?

Just like the society it comes from and like the professional dough that produces it.

Romania occupies the penultimate place in the list of EU countries in the Gender Equality Index, calculated by the European Institute for Gender Equality.
We are making the slowest progress in equalizing rights and opportunities between women and men. It is so difficult to keep up with other countries, that since 2005, when it is measured, Romania has gone down one place.
This score gathers measurements of various aspects, and the most dramatic of all relates to women's participation in decision-making, in power, be it political, social or economic.
Romania has the fewest women among all EU countries in decision-making positions.
The way things that concern us all are conceived and applied is devoid of the perspective of half the population, therefore unrepresentative of half of us.
Only 11% of creative leadership roles are held by women globally. In Romania, I think there are a maximum of four women who run full power a creative department.
Conclusions and what we can do

Women remain the queens of households, of detergents and margarines, and men the principles of the public sphere, who confer social prestige.

What does the advertising we see educate us today? That the woman is inferior to the man, that she must cook, be sexy, that the woman is a sexual object. Moreover, advertisements cultivate the belief that only men are strong, brave and able to make money. Can this change? YES. How? Enforcing existing legislation, sanctioning them and promoting diversity and equality.

We have a long way to go to get there, but I tend to think that Romania is slowly making progress, unlike previous years or other countries. It is certain that our mission is to continue campaigning for gender equality and to do everything we can to stop the stereotypes created in society by sexist advertising.

Sources:

https://www.scena9.ro/article/clisee-sexism-femei-publicitate
https://issuu.com/elenaratoi4/docs/sexismul_studiu?utm_source=conversion_success&utm_campaign=Transactional&utm_medium=email
https://www.academia.edu/43528431/Imaginea_femeii_i_n_publicitatea_roma_neasca_