Advertisements

A thought came into my head as we were discussing and analyzing a photograph on class, the power of advertising. If i remember correctly there were 3 man on top of a woman and as we analyzed it i thought about how advertisement can affect people or at least in a subconscious way.During the class many interpretations came about including that the picture almost depicted rape because one men was on top of a woman holding her down and three other man watching. They were looking down on the woman and mind you that her pelvis was raised almost as if she wanted it to happen and in the background was a little bit of a cloudy sky.

What does that all mean though? Are men supposed to be on top of woman and is it ok for everyone to standby and watch? The island sky meaning that it's all good and relaxed? Are woman supposed to take it? While all the men are ripped and sweaty do all the woman have to be skinny and passive? Is this what you are supposed to take away from it, mind you the people that created this ad probably went to school to learn advertisement. I'm not saying all men who are muscular are doing it to fit in and I'm not saying that all women who are skinny are doing it to live up to the expectation, sometimes men are muscular because they do sports and not because they work out and sometimes women are skinny because it's just the genes. And on the topic of masculinity do you see how my thought process on the sentence before already came to the conclusion that men were playing sports but back to the point. While there are ads that are probably the opposite of what i have described above such as this one (http://fashionindie.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/dolce_gabbana_whips.jpg) which reverse the roles of the typical male and female those are definitely not as common, and it is sometimes unrealistic because in school i see people from all shapes and sizes and looks.