Malicious Media – Where Advertisements Go Awry

A global recession notwithstanding, the culture of consumption is breeding more than lavish spending habits. Advertisements that cater to a primarily female market are simultaneously objectifying and demeaning them. These culprits depict women in a less-than-favourable light, eroticizing, plasticizing, and sensationalizing them, and often drawing parallels to animals or corpses.

What is worse is that, with the exception of alternative media sources such as MediaWatch.com and About-Face.org, women are not exactly screaming from their rooftops to end such ominous representations. Far from it, in fact. Rather, we are dropping our credit cards on those shiny department store and couture house counters, and by doing so, we are essentially authorizing the development and distribution of such blatantly offensive marketing.

How little these corporations and advertisers must think of us as to undermine us right under our noses. How little we must think of ourselves to let it continue for so long without so much as a peep.

I will readily hold myself accountable as I cannot count the number of times I have made purchases without first researching the ethical position of a company, only to later discover advertisements that would make me want to hurl my new belongings off of a moving bus.

Included in this post are select advertisements that successfully meet all three O’s: objectifying, offensive, oppressive. Congratulations to these “winners”!