Exploitation of Female Beauty in Visual Advertisement: A Marxist - Feminist Study

Abstract

Advertisements on Media affect viewers and can easily shape their perception to look at things including gender relation and women’s sexuality. When women are projected in advertisement with sexual appeal that can draw the attention of audience ultimately forces to think about advertising product. This is the ideological tool of capitalism. Women have amazingly accepted capitalist hegemony by presenting themselves as a beautiful object to win the favor of onlookers. Thus, when females are stereotypically presented by Media, it does not only satisfy women’s desire but also creates gender distinction which is the key assumption of feminism. Though many researchers have already proved that the image of ideal women as presented by the media today is harmful, women show their devotaion towards the ideal image thinking that beauty is one of the major tools of higher self-esteem. This psychological chain creates a circle between media advertiser, female models and the actual consumers. Beauty and sexuality become the central theme behind the entire circle of capitalist feminism. Explicitly all the parts of capitalist feminism are satisfied: media advertisers are satisfied by consumers’ intention to purchase; consumers are satisfied by ideal media image and female models are satisfied with their beauty as well as high self-esteem which is directly related to media advertiser. Presenting female body in advertising does not only promote commercial products but cultural fashion as well. Women from consumer class express excessive desire to become as beautiful as the media images and try to copy dressing patterns posed in ideal image. However beauty and sexuality are not free from politics because this trend leads consumers to invest larger amount of money to get the commercialized product. In this situation this paper implies quantitative and qualitative methodology to explore the impact on a micro and macro level of absorbing sexist media that presents the audience with unrealistic and objectified image of feminism. It also shows the facts that how manufacturing companies exploit common consumers and media models themselves by their hegemonic mechanism.