Advertising and Women in the United States

Super exploitation through adding "Objectification" ( a purely capitalist phenomenon) to the mix of earlier forms of exploitation.

M. Asadi


Advertisers (and the reason for their effectiveness) is that they are reproducing in raw form the gender roles projected by the U.S. social structure, in which women are considered worthy of contempt in everything except their sexuality and that also according to a predetermined and very narrow form. In other words women are hidden, invisible and veiled (not physically but socially) as far as identity goes in everything except their sexuality in the United States.

Why this appears outrageous to most is because of the ideological carryover that seeks to present the gender values of the past as if they were today's gender values (the conservatives) and for others the gender values of a non-existent utopia as 'freedom achieved' (the non conservatives), whose movement has been co opted, since the structural status quo has remained. However this outrage is quickly pacified among both (conservatives and non-conservatives) when they are punished for trying to incorporate those old or new values into the current structure, both men and women when they try to deviate from predetermined roles are punished by a bureaucratized structure regardless of cultural ideals. The vast majority of men and women have a role to play in such conditioning and punishment, as they fit into the role the structure has prescribed for them, I would argue more so than the advertisers. In other words by reinforcing those role ideals they help to reproduce them, even as they merely fit into an exploitative structure.

Jean Kilbourne and other who blame advertisers as if they are doing something "novel", need to understand the super exploitation of women (Taliban plus) inherent in the U.S. social structure, revealed empirically annually in the rape/battery/assault/poverty stats in the U.S.