Originally I drawn to the ad very easily, but then I realized what Natan Jewelers was implying. Natan has a whole series of ads depicting what a woman sees when a man proposes to her, especially when it is with a Natan ring. Most of the advertisements show an overweight, balding, or ugly guy holding a closed ring box, and then in the picture beside it, the ring box is open, and the guy is suddenly thin, with hair, and a handsome face. While all of these ads flared my temper, the one I put in my blog affected me much more so, because it depicts women as being willing to do anything once she has a pretty piece of jewelry.
It is certainly condescending to women, especially since men see this and may form the opinion that they can do anything, and all they have to do for sex is just buy expensive jewelry, and the woman will just fall all over them. The ad is explicitly objectifying the woman, giving the attitude that the woman is just a thing that can be bought to obtain what the guy desires, as discussed in chapter five of our textbook. The ad “reduces the woman to her body, and values her only as a sex object” (page 208) by using the influence of the ring to get sex. The ad discredits women as being pushovers and being so focused on materialistic items that we will succumb to anything if we’re are just given something expensive. The ad wants to make women believe that they are only worth what their boyfriends/fiancés/husbands buy them, and that when we are given something as grand as expensive jewelry, we must return the favor by showing our gratitude through what the ad implies men want most - sex.
Work Cited
Kirk, Gwyn and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women's Live: Multicultural Perspectives. Fifth ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2010.
I've never seen these ad's but it I can understand why it made you angry. It is very condescending to women except not so much in the since when you say makes them pushovers, I believe so it's more to your first point viewing women as items to be bought. whats really interesting to me is how the women sees the guy in these ads. when the ring is nice all of a sudden he's good looking. bringing us back to the topic of "power equals money"
ReplyDeleteThis ad definitely angered me because the message that it’s putting out couldn’t have been more obvious. It’s sad to see how something as special like an engagement is taken so lightly, and transformed into just sex. The worst part about this ad is that it puts women in a bad position. Agreeing with what you said, women are basically being represented as materialistic. It almost seems as though this company, as well as all others that have ads like these, believe that all women care about are expensive things and are willing to degrade themselves in order to get it. The ad also serves as a bad influence to young women that don’t know any better and think this is the correct way to behave. The same way it influences young women it does young men. Because of ads like this it creates the vicious cycle of how men see and treat women poorly (including women seeing themselves as such).
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw this Natan Jewelry ad, my mouth literally fell open. I have certainly experienced my fair share of negative portrayals of women in advertising for sure but the anger and sadness I felt after seeing this ad in particular resonated in me. While the positions occupied by the male and the female in this ad are perhaps more subtle than other jewelry ads, the implications are still obvious. I think your point about the materialism of women that is implied by this ad was spot on. Your analysis very accurately points out the way that women’s integrity is completely undermined by this advertisement as well the fact that men’s integrity is also made a joke of with this ad. The implication that men are one dimensional and are motivated by nothing other than sex makes me sad. Great use of book material to support your points and great analysis overall!
ReplyDeleteAmanda,
ReplyDeleteWell, your ad sure sparked some discussion. This ad is interesting in so many ways, both in how women and men are portrayed. It also makes me think of the adolescent joke about girls done with hand gestures similar to the ones in the ad: some girls sit like this (closed), while some girls sit like this (open), the girls who sit like this (open) get this (thumb through opening) like this. In both instances there is an occasion between the virgin and the whore, through the idea that the virgin will become your whore through heteronormative marriage rituals.
Interesting!