An advertisement is a significant element for industries which established around the theme of selling a product to potential customers. Fashion is the industry which has always been supported with advertisements, but there have been some controversial issues about some of the ads because some of them considered as racist, sexist, and even sexually provocative. Even though our world tries not to impact those problems these days, there had been unforgettable moments. Womenswear is the most crucial sector in the fashion industry today. It had some difficulties in the early decades because male power was more dominant than women’s rights. It’s good to see there have been some changes to not offending anyone when creating advertisements for clothes, but there have been many wrong approaches before that.
This particular advertisement I want to issue is from a shoe company called Weyenberg. The ad published in the magazines during the 1970s. There are two different things could be understandable from the ad, which one of them is way too offensive. The not lousy scenario could be that the women on the advertisement named her shoe with a female name, just like some people who give names to their cars. However, the other scenario is more accurate, because it was an advertisement for male customers. The ad tries to say men are more powerful and stronger than women. Men keep her women where she belongs, which is just as down as men’s shoes. The woman on the advertisement is naked, which transforms her into a sexual object. This advertisement humiliates the women in every way possible. However, thinking about the time the ad published, the ad reinforces traditional gender forms perfectly, because women didn’t get the respect and equality back then. Even if there was a male dominance, it is not acceptable to put a woman in the same statue with men shoes. As Susan B. Kaiser said on her book Fashion and Culture Studies (2012):
“Gender is actually not just who we are; it is what we do or perform as we participate in an embodied way with cultural discourses.”
The woman on the ad is a female gendered human. The perception back then showed how women were not equal to men, and their only job is being a mother. Male dominance reflected on the ad and showed the woman as her gender is second-class. The social interaction between women and men turned women into non-stop worker ants.
Our world is lucky to start to understand how all humankind is equal and incomparable in any situation. Fashion advertisements became the best way to show the empowering of women, which is mainly on how women could achieve anything. While women can achieve their dreams, it is our job to create an environment without any racism, sexism, classism and so on.
Bibliography
- Kaiser, Susan. Fashion and Cultural Studies. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2011.
