FEMALE BREAST IN ADVERTISEMENT

Western society’s media saturation is creating advertising saturation with few ad-free physical and digital spaces. Advertisements are present across media platforms, and advertising is a big business. One estimate suggests that across all media platforms, companies spent over $166 billion on advertising in 2013. It is difficult to determine the exact number of people’s daily advertisement exposure, but with 24-hour access to media and with consumers using more than one media platform at a time, the exposure is endless. Savvy advertising agencies understand the complexities associated with living in a mass-mediated, consumer-driven culture that promotes idealized lifestyles through the consumption of goods and services. Advertisers must work to attract the attention of a fragmented, distracted audience.

Advertisers must also meet the demands of sophisticated, educated consumers socialized in a media-rich environment. Consumers want advertisements that do not reduce their desires to the lowest common denominator. The lowest common denominator has historically centered on the idea that “sex sells.” Today, consumers want advertisements that do not feel like sales pitches. However, advertisers have not abandoned the idea that sex sells. Instead, marketers have answered this call by selling idealized lifestyles through the consumption of products. To do this, advertisers have had to tap into current norms, values, and behaviors. In this way, media, and by extension advertisements, simultaneously reinforce and reconstruct existing social, economic, and political structures.

For women, cultural norms dictate an emphasis on appearance that results in an obsession with idealized beauty norms and standards. Idealized beauty standards include large breasts, small waists, and ample hips. Advertisers capitalize on these messages by reinforcing gender roles and norms. Sexualized images continue to be a major component of many advertisements. However, the percentage of sexualized ads has increased over time but in disproportionate numbers and ways. Women are more likely to be portrayed in a light that is both overtly and covertly sexualized compared to advertisements of men. Women’s breasts are a central feature in sexualized advertisements. Using breasts in advertisements captures consumer audiences. In this way, marketers use breasts to sell both products and lifestyles. Advertisements are highly suggestible and persuasive elements of everyday life. Consumption is sexualized and is associated with pleasure. Advertisers sell unrealistic expectations, including the idea that consumption equals happiness. Advertising shapes societal desires in hopes of influencing consumer behaviors.

How Breasts Are Used in Advertisements 

The primary goal of advertisers is to attract consumer attention by creating desire for their products, in the hopes that that desire manifests into action and ultimately purchase. The purchasing of these products is a marker of desired lifestyles, but it also indicates the belief by consumers that the desired lifestyle can be achieved through consumption. Advertisers have become very adept at targeting and creating loyal audiences. Advertisements featuring breasts are marketed to all audiences, although in nuanced ways. The use of breasts in advertisements is often gratuitous and has little connection to breasts or even most women’s lives. Women’s bodies are often used by advertisers as means to sell products. In this way, women’s bodies are commoditized. Although women’s bodies as a whole are used to sell consumer goods, women’s breasts are used ubiquitously. Images of women are frequently cropped to fragment women’s bodies. Breasts are a preferred feature among advertisers. Women are shown in passive, subordinate positions and are often used as decoration in the background. Women’s bodies and the breasts in particular are often positioned in ads for the male gaze.

Women’s bodies, and breasts in particular, are frequently used in advertisements for food. Women are seen eating in a sensual manner. This portrayal further sexualizes women and their bodies, and it links women and food and constructs eating with pleasure. This idea is reinforced in advertisements featuring women wearing revealing clothing, low-cut tops, and plunging necklines that eroticize their breasts. Further, women are even pictured eating in bed in a sexualized way, making noises and utterances that are similar to sexual noises.

Some criticisms about breasts in advertisements stem from the gratuitous use of breasts.  Advertisements for products such as motor oil, Internet hosting, and orange juice feature women in revealing clothing that sexualizes their breasts.

Advertisements using breasts illustrate that women are used as decorative pieces for men and their lives. Advertisements, regardless of the product, often feature women in sexually provocative positions. Women are positioned with exaggerated back arches, opened mouths, and exposed breasts. While some advertisements include women in an active role or position, the majority of them portray women as passive objects. Many advertisements are not explicitly sexual; however, some elements of sexuality are present in subtle ways. In some advertisements, women are presumed to be topless or even fully nude unnecessarily.

Marketers make promises to the public via their advertisements. They promise beauty and sexiness through consumption, suggesting that desirability and attractiveness are things that are purchased. By using breasts in advertisements, advertisers inoculate women into adhering to idealized beauty norms. This reinforces societal obsessions with appearance, youth, and perfection. Women are valued based on their looks, whereas men are valued based on their ability to acquire or attract beautiful women who meet the cultural expectations associated with idealized beauty.

For women, breasts in advertising construct feminine ideals that most women want to emulate even though the depictions are unrealistic for most women. In fact, alterations through software programs like Photoshop support the notion that the depictions of women in the media are unrealistic even among those in the appearance industry. Advertisements of products directly related to breast.

Breasts are used to advertise products that are not specifically related to women. An example of this is beer commercials. Women dressed in revealing clothing or even bikinis are often featured in commercials and advertisements directed at men. The relationship between consumption and identity is less straightforward for men. Breasts are used in advertisements directed at men to appeal to primal desires that see women as sexual objects for the viewing pleasure of men. In other words, breasts are used to attract male attention. Once advertisers gain the attention of their audience, advertisers are free to engage in marketing tactics to lure customers.

Feminist critiques of modern advertisements include the increase in the sexualization of women, the objectification and commodification of women and their breasts, and the reinforcement of narrow beauty ideals and attractiveness. Although feminist critiques of breasts in advertisement typically center on arguments against the sexualization of women, others see advertisers as answering the call to see women as sexual subjects and part of women’s liberation and empowerment. This new brand of advertising that capitalizes on women’s sexuality as a tool of empowerment has been called by some as “commodity feminism,” in which women as consumers can purchase or buy their equality through goods and services. This argument fails to consider that products and services marketed toward women are simply new packaging of old gender norms and idealized beauty standards. Although market research continues to explore the relationship between advertisements and purchasing behaviors, social research supports the correlation between the type and frequency of advertisements and product sales.

By Amber E. Deane in "Cultural Emncyclopedia of the Breast", edited by Merril D. Smith, Rowman & Littlefield, USA, 2014, excerpts pp.9-11. Editaded and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.