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Depicting Women as Sex Objects in Television Advertising: Effects on Body Dissatisfaction

Recent study in social cognition has focused on what specific environmental conditions would help promote the forming of gender stereotypes in regards to social perception and behavior. Television advertisements are highly suggestible, persuasive elements of everyday life that do help form and strengthen gender stereotypes. Analysis of television advertisements has shown that many ads contain gender-stereotypic ideas and pictures. Americans cannot escape being affected by these ads, as more than ninety percent of all American families own televisions, and the average person views over seven hundred advertisements each week alone.
Social scientists are suggesting that although television ads are generally made to promote specific items, they may have a lasting effect on several things, such as people’s beliefs, values, attitudes and even their behavior. In 1980, researchers from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization suggested that repeated exposure to sexist ads is a contributing cause to havoc in society and many social problems, including such behavior as violence against women and sexual harassment to eating disorders. Although not many experimental studies have been done about the results of gender stereotypic television ads, research does suggest that these ads can temporarily influence the viewers’ self-concepts. Jennings, Geis, & Brown in a 1980 study found that women who viewed ads showing reversed gender roles were more self-confident than women who viewed ads with typical gender roles. In addition, Atkin & Miller in 1975 showed that children who viewed ads depicting reversed gender roles rated male oriented jobs as more appropriate for women, as opposed to those children who viewed ads with women in a traditional homemaker role. Later studies have shown that ads portraying women as homemakers may...