To what extent advertising affects women Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

To what extent advertising affects women - Essay Example In a more specific term, the paper will critically analyze the effects of advertisement to the female or women audience relative to the use of sex, female models, women as sex objects and the superwoman. Before examining the effects of advertisements to the female audience, it is important to have an overview on what is advertising. In brief, advertising is the tool used to promote a product or a service to the intended market or audience. Advertisements are used to draw the attention of the consumers and prospect market and highlight the importance or the characteristics of the product or service. In the earlier years of advertising, barbershops used strips of red, white, and blue to advertise their services. However, due to the enhancement of technology, many had used every medium platform to advertise. Today, advertising has many forms which come from print to multimedia, and down to social networking websites (Petley 4). In relation to the term gender role, it is defined as the norms of a certain culture that is associated with the male and female. Therefore, in order for advertisements to be effective in a certain culture, advertisers must learn the past, the origin, and the current gender roles of the target audience. In certain societies, men and women have lesser differences; however, there are also societies where the masculine values are considered higher than the feminine values. Nonetheless, according to McArthur and Resk, in most of the cultures, gender roles differ in six major aspects, which include credibility, role, location, persuasive arguments, rewards and product type (qtd. in Ifezue 15). Credibility differs among men and women in most cultures because men are considered more authoritative than women. This can be supplemented by independent roles that man portrays, while women portray roles that are dependent on their relationships with other people. Due to the authority of men,