THE MOST FAMILIAR APPROACH taken by designers who want to help sell more stuff is the misleading and manipulative coupling of sexy bodies with products.
Consider the ad below that ran full page in Life magazine more than 50 years ago.
This “playful” design shows what was considered acceptable in 1952 in the United States. Today, it seems unbelievable that one of the largest American coffee brands would run this ad, and that America’s highest-circulating magazine of the day would print it. Some may be surprised at what the ad reveals about society’s attitude towards women in the 1950s.
It is tempting to dismiss it as simply a reflection of the attitudes of the day. However, to what degree were such full page ads responsible for encourag-ing American men in 1952 that it was okay, even laudable, to beat their wives?
And what currently acceptable advertising running in our magazines today will an increasingly media-literate society look back upon as reprehensible 50 years from now? Ads continue to exploit women, though often with more subtlety.
A teenage mermaid seducing a bottle of water may convince America to burn its oil reserves to ship French water across the sea (to the continent with the world’s largest fresh water supply). But does the means justify the end?
At the same time, what unreasonable expectations are we burying in the messages that we give our daughters today regarding the composition and use of their bodies?
Today’s advertisers are clearly no longer as concerned with anti-sexist backlash as they were in the 1990s, a time when it seemed that such imagery was fading from use in the West in keeping with the march of women’s liberation. I am amongst those who thought this battle would soon be won, just as I thought we had successfully shifted away from subtly undermining the authority of women by referring to them as “girls.”
As a genre of visual cliché becomes accepted in our society, the layering becomes increasingly subtle and derivative. It can be an enlightening exercise to systematically review the use of a particular device, through the spectrum of overt to subtle, delving into the layers.
Because using women’s bodies is such a familiar technique, the next few pages use it to demonstrate an abbreviated version of such an exploration.
From the least subtle, where women’s bodies are actually branded...
...to the commonplace lazy marketing of using women’s bodies to brazenly promote just about anything.
Adding a warm, more human appeal to cold technology is tempting.
Is it okay to use women to sell good ideas?
Is it okay to distort bodies in order to distort opinions?
Often the context of who is speaking or where they are speaking is what makes the advertising inappropriate.
As society becomes more media-literate, a common ploy is to mock the styles of earlier decades. Now-forbidden stereotypes re-appear, as we are taken back to a time when they were status quo.
Nor is it okay to recycle retired, deceptive branding for new markets, using questionably empowering slogans...
The solution is not to introduce false balance by exploiting men to an equal degree.
The solution is to think, to be aware, to debate.
The solution is to respect everyone. The solution is to use the power we have responsibly and sensitively. The solution is to imagine a society where the loudest, largest messages are those that not only promote healthy behaviors but also embrace metaphors that reinforce them as well.
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