In an advertisement that is probably supposed to equate eating meat to cannibalism Pamela Anderson is marked for slaughter, but the latent messages in this picture are almost as harmful to the woman depicted as the slaughterhouse is to the cattle she is attempting to save. The slicing up of bodies is not usually as straightforward as it is in this PETA ad, but it is a common theme in ads for nearly everything. Breasts are used to sell shirts, midriffs used to sell beer, legs used to sell sports ware. Advertising has become an assortment of pieces of people. This bombardment of disembodiment wreaks havoc on the collective unconscious. People begin to see themselves in pieces. Pieces that are unlike the ones they see on television or in print advertisements and must be bettered. The goal is to be like the person in the advertisement. Often, failing to look like the perfect person in the picture, the person watching will simply buy the product advertised as a consolation. Perhaps they buy products because they think quiet thoughts along the lines of, “that beautiful person sure does look good drinking that beer,” or “those pretty people seem to be having a lot of fun with their nicotine patches on.” Whatever the case, ideal body image is always on society’s minds, figuratively carved into rumps and rounds.
Showing only body parts, instead of a whole person, dehumanizes the person in the photo. Women are most commonly the victims of this process, both because they are more often the subjects of advertisement slaughter and because they receive the negative consequences to which this dehumanization leads. It has been suggested by a gaggle of feminists that this process of dehumanizing women causes the general public to think of women, as a whole, as less than human which opens the doors for domestic violence and feeds into rape culture. In advertisements women are often pictured as objects. They become beer bottles, cars and cigarettes to name a few. Objects, as a rule, do not demand respect or care and are therefore not respected or cared for. Framing women as objects, and slicing them into pieces, puts them in a position to be disrespected and uncared for. This, of course, is a set up for physical abuse and rape. It isn’t just men that this message is sent to either. Women also tend to think of themselves, subconsciously, as “less than” and “secondary to” men. Since throughout history to be human is to be “man,” thinking of themselves as less than man equates, on some level, to thinking of themselves as less than human. This mindset causes women to believe that they don’t deserve to be treated equally. Why else would a woman internalize spousal abuse and believe that they themselves must be in the wrong somehow? (Don’t answer that; I’m on a roll) Objectifying women causes all of western society to view women as lesser beings to be cut into pieces and devoured (usually figuratively).
While it is true that there are also pictures of parts of men in advertisements, they are neither as prevalent nor as objectifying. Men, for instance, are rarely framed as objects and even the most “heroine chic” male model is posed in a position of moderate power. Women, on the other hand, are often framed as something breakable or, ironically, as something with which special care should be taken (a luxury car, perhaps). The reason for this lack of equal representation in objectifying advertising is relatively obvious: there’s nothing in it for them… the men, that is. Men control the vast majority of advertising agencies, the corporations they work for and the networks on which their ads run. It would not serve their interests to make themselves seem trivial and un-powerful. Doing such to women, however, puts half of the population at their feet hence bringing them more power still. It also helps to quell their fears of what they do not understand. Women have been regarded as having great power all throughout history, and men have never been able to pinpoint the source of that power. Centuries ago, with the wide acceptance of Christianity, that power was greatly subdued; but men’s fear of it was not entirely put to rest. Keeping women “in their place” has been going on for at least two thousand years and at this point in history is very likely done out of habit. The fear is probably also habitual. Fear and habit aside, subjugating women has been in the best interests of the ruling gender for a very long time.
The mild objectification of men in advertising pales in comparison to the constant bombardment of incredibly objectifying images of women. If the incredible number of ads featuring and disassociating women isn’t upsetting enough, men also don’t face any consequences to do with the handful of ads that feature and objectify them. Men are the ruling gender. This idea is only contested by those that know that it is true, but would rather other people didn’t believe it to be true. They’re arguments are generally pretty weak. Since this is true, and undisputed (more or less), it is reasonable to assume that men would not put themselves in any position in which they would have to face adverse consequences as a gender. For women, the objectification creates a much deeper fear that is a constant reality. From very small children girls are taught to be afraid. They don’t know exactly what they are afraid of, but as adults the fears are realized in the women around them. The rape and/or abuse of women occur on a regular enough basis that every woman, once a girl, comes to understand what she’d been taught to fear all her life. This is not, in any way, a consequence that men have to face on the rare occasion that they are depicted as objects. This is not a world that men have to live in. I had a professor once tell the class that the fear that women live with every day of their lives is comparable to the fear that soldiers face when they are deployed to a battle zone, but with a very important difference: Soldiers eventually get to come home; women exist in that battle zone. He is a really great professor.
