Examples of objectification of men in adverts. Are we being just as bad as the men, or just redressing the balance?

[MardyBra]

Had a discussion recently with someone who felt that women can't complain about objectification in adverts when men are used as a object of lust in things like the diet coke ad.

My argument was that women are routinely objectified and that men could hardly feel oppressed if the table are turned and their images were used occasionally.

Tbh I can't think of many adverts were men's bodies are objectified. In something like the diet coke ad or this Levis creek ad, it's all about the humour and the women's reactions to the hot body. It's hardly a half naked man sitting on a car bonnet, is it?

Anyway, I'm just musing really. Any more examples or thoughts?

Original diet coke ad.

Bugger wrong link

Trying again

MardyBra In your thread title you ask the question "Are we being just as bad as the men, or just redressing the balance?"

Who is the "we", who could be "just as bad" or could do any "redressing the balance"?

Adverts that objectify women are made by advertising companies controlled almost exclusively by white, middle-aged, middle-class men, on behalf of brands controlled almost exclusively by white, middle-aged, middle-class men.

The much smaller number of adverts that objectify men are made by advertising companies controlled almost exclusively by white, middle-aged, middle-class men, on behalf of brands controlled almost exclusively by white, middle-aged, middle-class men.

Where is the influence or power of women in this situation?

All those ads seem to me to be more homo erotic than appealing to women. It's like this aul fella projecting male sexuality on to women. All disembodied areas of bodies.

I don't want to redress the balance by objectifying anyone. I don't like the Diet Coke ads, and I don't think it's empowering in any way to have a load of women getting all silly and giggling over a semi-naked man just because he's been to the gym a bit.

But I don't think ads like that are anything like as common as ones with objectified women.

Oh good point vesuvia. I've missed the point entirely haven't I?

And ebear, I agree about not identifying with "giggly" and "girly". I suppose it makes it more palatable to many if women lust after men in a non-threatening way.

I don't want to see a world where the "balance is redressed"

I have equal contempt for sex used as a commodity, no matter the gender involved

I would ask your friend to try to imagine a day where all images of men and women were reversed.

So where there would normally be an image of a scantily clad woman, or one looking sexually available, or a page 3 image, or an advert showing just a woman's body part and not the whole of her, there would be the equivalent image of a man.

And where there was an image of a man doing whatever they are doing, the equivalent image would be of a woman. Most images in the media of men are of them being important or doing stuff, while fully dressed, often just showing head and shoulders, so that would all be women.

Then ask themselves to think whether any "balance" has been "redressed".

I also find it interesting to think about just how extreme the current media is in appealing to a male heterosexual view of the world.

It is human nature to look at attractive people, to quite like looking at attractive people. Clearly straight men are not the only group who enjoy doing this. Lots of women and lots of gay men are not going to be averse to looking at an attractive bloke.

So, given that, why are all the images out there designed to appeal to a straight male gaze? Using such an extremely objectifying, highly sexualised and passive view of women?

And this is so common that people just don't notice, it's everywhere.

If you swapped them around for a day, and all the "sexy" images of women were replaced by the equivalent of men, a lot of men would feel really fucking uncomfortable. And maybe a lot of women too as we're not used to it. But this is what women are carrying out their days amongst constantly.

It's bad.

White men come in for a hell of a lot of stick, given the size of the markets and economies in China, the Far East, South America and Africa.

Well there is actually a pininterest page featuring ads with men as sex objects some of them go back a few years but it is here if you want to see <a class="break-all" href="//(www.pinterest.com/bembridge/men-as-sex-objects-in-ads/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">HERE)

Some have both sexes but advertising will use men and women to sell products either as sex objects or else using perceived concepts that we have been programmed to believe.

"Some have both sexes but advertising will use men and women to sell products either as sex objects...."

But invariably they decide to use women.

I have yet to go down the escalator at the tube on a regular basis and note than most of the ads displayed hot men lounging in their pants, pouting at the camera, or merely showed a part of them e.g. a toned pec or a washboard stomach.

The ones with men as sex objects are so out of the usual that they are extremely noticeable.

sausage's link working

These images (and thinking about my commute here TBH) of men like that are very unusual. In that I don't tend to see them on ads on escalators or in daily papers and so on, which are the media that we are exposed to in a drip drip way and without any choice.

Interesting also that I would say a lot of those images are also meeting a male gaze, albeit a gay male gaze.

Still as a heterosexual woman I wouldn't mind having images like that around, personally, however I imagine a lot of men would feel very uncomfortable with being confronted with that all the time, so I wouldn't say it would be a good thing.

Really you want to aim for no group to be reduced to a sum of their parts generally surely. Images of attractive people are all well and good but it's the sexuality / availability aspects that people find disturbing.

It'd be interesting to see the dates that those different ads were active.

The few that do also have women in all have them there in a sexual way.

I find them a bit dull, certainly en masse - there's mostly a very narrow range of man shape there - very toned 6 pack and so on, mostly clean shaven face, no or only minimal body hair. They're mostly pretty dull, really, and I'd agree that a lot of them are objectifying men for other men, just as women in ads are objectified for men.

It's interesting isn't it.

When the "diet coke" argument comes up it always says "look at the ads with men in there you go women, you're getting what you want as well everything's equal".

But i would say that the vast majority of men who are presented in a sexualised manner are not primarily intended to appeal to women at all. They are a gay male aesthetic.

So how does that argument even work. It leaves the diet coke ad and. Um.

Or. This is a tricky one to explain. Women are socialised to not objectify men. To be interested in them for personality, sense of humour, not what they look like. Women consume less visual porn than men. What would women actually like, in a purely sexualised context, without those pressures? Similarly men are fed a very narrow image of "this is what a sexy woman looks like and wears" from a young age, also.

So I guess the men in those images (and I find lots of them plenty appealing to look at TBH) are the equivalent of the women in similar images in that they represent an extremely narrow view of what is "sexy".

Curwen wrote - "White men come in for a hell of a lot of stick, given the size of the markets and economies in China, the Far East, South America and Africa."

White men have lots of influence and control over advertising in developing countries.

WPP which, I think, is still the world's largest advertising company, is based in London, and is dominated by white men. It bought 5 advertising companies in China alone last year.

The largest advertising agencies in China include subsidiaries of Publicis (based in Paris), WPP and Saatchi & Saatchi.

The largest advertising agencies in South Africa include subsidiaries of WPP, Omincom (based in New York) and Saatchi & Saatchi.

The largest advertising agencies in Korea include subsidiaries of WPP and Omnicom.

The largest advertising agency in India is a subsidiary of WPP.

The largest advertising agency in Brazil is a subsidiary of WPP.

Advertising is a global business dominated by white men based in the UK, USA and France.

What sort of "stick" do white men come in for?

What does it have to do with the OP?

When I have been in Asia, the difference has been that the women who are sexualised and objectified everywhere in the media have been far less likely to be white. I would imagine the same occurs in other parts of the globe where people who are not predominantly white live.

Not sure how that links to white men getting "stick". Is it because it is out of line for those who prefer to look at white pretty ladies in their knickers?

All very peculiar.

Oh sorry just realised it was in response to Vesuvia and she has responded.

I also don't see why white men shouldn't get "stick" TBH. I'm in the UK and on this board that is generally what we are talking about.

From a global perspective they don't exactly lack power or influence either.

This has been mentioned here before, but I think it's more fun than that page of ads featuring men:
www.cnn.com/2013/11/01/living/ducati-panigale-male-models/

And to be serious for a moment, it does ask the question of what's really being conveyed when a human image appears along with a commercial product. If it's not a case of simply showing how the item is used, what are we really being asked to think when we see the person?

1 - I very much doubt any of these adverts are made by feminists or even women.

2 - Adverts in which women are objectified/made to look stupid/shown in traditional sexist roles are so normalised they are barely commented on.

3 - Could you tell me the way the Diet Coke ad expounds feminist philosophy or is influenced by feminist thinking? The Diet Coke ad is used so often in these arguments but I've yet to see anyone explain how it is a feminist ad.

I find this whole Diet Coke ad thing so fucking tiresome. It's made by uneducated people who think that feminism is merely an inversion of patriarchal values and its aims are to have a society just as shitty and poverty-stricken and warlike and sexist as the one with live in now but with women at the top and men at the bottom. Here's news for you - feminism is about having a completely different society, a completely different way of doing things and a completely different value system.