Friday, February 27, 2015

Ad for world's thinnest phone objectify's women

The UK banned an advertisement for Tornado 348, a phone that is supposedly the thinnest phone in the world. The ban was because of the way the advertisement objectified a woman's body. Critics say the advertisement spent 10 seconds actually showing the phone, while the other 40 seconds focused on the body of the woman in the advertisement.

The advertisements feature the woman ironing her jeans in her underwear only to find out that she ironed the phone over her jeans and features close-ups of the woman's breasts, buttocks and lips. In the company's defense it said that the woman's role was to show that the phone was so thin that she didn't even know she was ironing it. 

We have seen this many times before in American advertisements, such as the Hardee's commercial with the one woman biting into a juicy hamburger on the beach and wonder why the advertisers would make this choice if the focus should be more on the product.

It's about the lifestyle that people want when they think about buying something. This is one of the reasons why women are used in these ads like this. I can see how it can appeal to men, but how does that appeal to women? When the advertisement has nothing to do with the product being advertised then it defeats the purpose of an advertisement.

When will ads start to focus on the product instead of the person using them in a sexually suggestive way. Sex does sell, but I think advertisements will have to come up with more clever ways to sell products without offending a large group of people, such as women and also for the sake of the next generation to know that there are other ways to sell products. http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/25/8106639/sexy-phone-ad-banned-uk

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