Week 4 EOC: Women in Advertising

There has been a major change in the way advertising is shown to the masses in the last several decades. Going from print ads in newspaper and magazines to digital media has greatly influenced how the terrain has changed. What has not changed, however, is what we are seeing when it comes to the woman’s role in these advertisements. My first example is from way back in the day. The quality is dated; looks like it could be for a full page magazine ad, but without reading the text at the bottom, I can still get the full effect from this ad. This subservient woman is enthralled with this guy’s pants. The closer she is to the pants may be the closer she is to taking them off. Even the dominant man has the back of her head gently in his hand. With that mentality men are going to want these jeans and women will by them for their man, just to experience why they are meant for “Contact”.

Now my second choice for the role of a woman in advertising is not as covert as the first. The whole idea is to sell web domains through the service of Go Daddy.com. The mascots for this website are exclusively scantily clad, attractive women, known as “Go Daddy Girls”. The most famous Go Daddy Girl would be race car driver Danica Patrick. Danica practically broke into the all-male “sport” of NASCAR and has done fairly well for herself. Advertising on cars and drivers is a genius way to appeal to the target audience. Now that they have a woman to place their brand with, men potentially flood the site and maybe even use their services. This doesn’t really demean the women in any way, except with their commercials of provocative and highly sexualized content, which really has nothing to do with the product. Over all I’d say that the only thing that has really changed with time, for women, is how “sexy” these ad campaigns can get without showing “too much.”