Both before and after this video I’ve thought that ads today still actively dehumanize, infantilize, objectify, and degrade women. While I have read into the topic of women in the media a bit, I’ve never considered how the objectification of women alters how men see us and vice versa. It was an interesting thought that male strength in media serves as a kick to female self esteem while female weakness could be a boost to male self-esteem.
I’ve considered before that male standards of beauty do much to assist them in their daily lives, giving them large muscles and agility that could easily help them in life. Standards of beauty for women largely make them less capable in every day life, with the desire for long nails, makeup, and footwear that actively hurt a woman’s feet. After the video I was able to discern that, although it’s dehumanizing to both men and women when they’re reduced to solely body parts, it’s inherently worse in the case of women’s dehumanization because largely our society caters more towards male preferences. It’s understandable that, as a society where men largely hold power over women, that their dehumanization would be desired-it would mean that they wouldn’t have to treat women well.
This statue became controversial because of its dehumanization of women and its depicted violence of women being seemingly justified because of the associated game’s zombie setting. In the statue the body is literally a corpse with the breasts front and center, despite the bloody decapitation and scarification of the body.
Manuel Bolaño’s 2014 runway show promoting his collection “The Boy with Sad Eyes” included artificial bruises on the legs of the models, suggesting that they stood as a metaphor for bruised feelings and a broken heart. Although the intention wasn’t to directly imply that bruises on the knees of women is somewhat romantic, I feel as if it contributes to fashion trend of painting bruises on women, which as a whole can normalize violence against women.
This Valentino advertisement includes several photos of women that are doing “criminal” actions and being either arrested for them or getting away with it. Even when doing something as degrading as being arrested in public, the women are seen in sexual positions and being degraded by the men around them.
https://www.hypefresh.co/american-apparel-files-for-bankruptcy/
This advertisement infantilizes the women shown, implying that they’re either high school or college students that just got home from school, while also showing them in sexual situations. Just as described in the video, this is 100% intentional and serves to show women that being perceived as helpless and young is seen as sexy.
https://static.businessinsider.com/image/4e959b37eab8ea0d0600002d-750.jpg
This advertisement serves to dehumanize women that are larger by comparing them to whales. It also employs the advertising “decapitation” by only showing the body, although because it’s implying that her body is unattractive it emphasizes her rolls and doesn’t expose her breasts in any way.