The Women’s Role in Advertisements

Nowadays our world and people are being eaten by advertisements and commercials almost as much as five, ten, and even twenty years ago. But of course now modern people have changed their opinions and thoughts almost on everything, advertisement included. And they have changed also. In “Hunger as Ideology”, Susan Bordo talks about her view on commercials and gives us the gender-dualities, which she thinks are traditional for ads. In her essay Bordo examined the historical stereotype of women; the portrayals that have arrested them, turning their psychological makeup into something destructive to their health, and yet, supported by society. It seems that to be thin is a goal for most women and as Bordo points out, it is the result of advertisements and a public image of women maintaining a number of roles, including that of server and of the sexually repressed.

She says that the real woman, as advertisements show, is the one who doesn’t eat much, who is slim, beautiful and cares about her family and relatives more than about herself. I, for one, mostly agree with Bordo. She makes clear some trends, ideals, and underlying principles that are commonly overlooked, especially by men, I would think she’d say. I presume that she would want Madison Avenue advertising firms to market items on terms other than sex appeal, the ability of a product to make a person seem more interesting, etc. It wasn’t until I read the part about how men are supposed to have insatiable appetites that I agreed with her. I am constantly finding myself hungry, and always able to eat. But just as the ideal women should have a “cool” relationship with food, I think I have that exact relationship.

Well, let’s discuss one of the commercials. Pop-tarts Pastry Swirls by Kellogg’s. What is it? Strawberry, new look? Since when did people start to care how their food looks? It’ is going to end up in the toilet, I am sorry for being that open. I think this advertisement I s a counterexample of the usual ads that Bordo describes in her essay. Look at the woman! She’s definitely not a model. Honestly, when I took a look at this ad, I got scared. My goodness: horribly wrinkly old lady with blue hair! Well of course there are a lot of older people out in our world, but I guess we are not so used to see them as advertisers. Let’s get back to the describing. This is a progress. A couple years ago our magazines or TV’s didn’t even have people of older age advertising anything. There always were gorgeous models, long lags, pretty faces, muscled bodies, etc. Now we can see anything. I think we all know that women are very carrying people. They care a lot about their children, husbands, friends, and themselves at the last moment.

Susan Bordo describes women as those, “who are almost never shown being fed by others.” (162). But in this ad, I can tell that lady thinks about herself a lot, she’s even getting her hair-cut without a hurry to go home and feed the “others.” She’s enjoys listening to her hair-stylist talking about the ways she would look better, smiling and most likely thinking about pop-tarts, for which she even can get money-back. Older classic lady has bright blue hair, which makes me think she is very brave and likes to experiment and experience different looks and feeling. Different look? I thought these pop-tarts are having a new look. So I assume the lady is having a new look because of the pop-tarts she ate. And according to Bordo’s text: “Emotional heights, love, and thrills: it is women who habitually seek such experiences from food and who are most likely to be overwhelmed by their relationship to food,” (147), that is why she got this interesting blue-head look.

And what is that behind her,” I thought momentarily. This guy, in my opinion, is the most unhandsome and unattractive type of man that people could find for advertising. He has, I believe, older style of clothing, haircut and sunglasses. His fingers have four rings on, which makes him to look more of a pimp, and plus nowadays gentlemen don’t wear that many rings at all. Few sizes bigger watch on his hand, which probably soon would fall off and dollar sign, sticking out of his shirt. But in the way his hands are targeted onto the blue-head lady, I’d say she the main object here, which doesn’t make me wanting those pop-tarts at all.

In the very middle in larger letters we see some writing. And what does it say? “Few things come with a money-back guarantee.” “Few”? What is that supposed to mean? As I know, now in USA almost everything comes with money-back guarantee. So the commercial tells us that we can have our money back if we will not like the Pastry Swirls. Is this really the only way it can make us buy these pop-tarts? Money-back? Long time ago we didn’t even have something like “money-back, “so advertisements were catching our eyes with perfect bodies and pretty faces, but not anymore. Now it has caught my eye with strange, scary-looking figures of random people, not models or movie stars.

And there’s another thing I wanted to say. Basing on my views on life I thought “Who would ever return any kind of food (not talking about dairy or meat of course) after it was open and tasted?” It is not that expansive, I think, that I would run to the grocery store to return it. Most likely I would make one of my friends eat it.

There are a lot of interesting things going on in today’s commercials. Every day people think of something new to advertise and someone new to advertise it. So I will go now and watch some TV and its commercials of course. Who knows what I am going to see there, nothing will probably surprise me a lot, unless there will be me watching the TV.