Exploitation of Female Beauty in Visual Advertisement: A Marxist - Feminist Study
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Department of English Janapriya Multiple Campus, Simalchour, Pokhara
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