Thursday, November 1, 2007

Blog #3, Advertisement -- Tyler Van Drei

http://www.frankwbaker.com/alcoho5.jpg

After looking through a few articles concerning alcohol I came upon a Jose Cuervo Especial advertisement. There is a male and a female in the ad, the male is holding the female up in the air and she is wearing a very skimpy bathing suit. Next to him holding her is a bottle of Jose Cuervo and a quote that says "Pursue Your Daydreams." She is basically being used as an item that says if you drink Jose Cuervo it will help you find a girl like the one in the advertisement that you "daydream about."

In this particular ad I do feel that it is a sexist ad. I, however, do not think that it is offensive to women because it portrays the man in what could be considered a "sexy" way also. The ad could be geared towards the woman seeking the man, or the man seeking the woman, since the ad does not clarify this it can not be considered offensive in my opinion. The dividing line between making it sexy or sexist is the fact that the ad does not clarify who is seeking who and keeps it equal between the two sexes.

I would definitely consider this ad to be anti-feminist. The way that the female is portrayed in a skimpy bathing suit with the long nice hair while being wrapped around a guy is definitely anti-feminist. It is just an example of what has become typical advertising for most alcohol companies. The body image that is shown definitely causes problems for many of the women who view these ads. Many women view ads like this and get the idea that it is the "perfect image and body type" and they end up hurting themselves trying to achieve it. I do think that advertisement divisions of the companies should have to follow some type of rules but I highly doubt any of them will take it upon themselves to stop using these types of ads. I think they should display a more diverse crowd, but without some type of government intervention I doubt that anything will change in the near future. I think there are only a couple ways that people could do anything to prevent advertisements like this, such as: appealing to a government official or widescale boycott of the product until they change the ads. I do not think either of these ways are very likely to work, but with some help it could be a good start.

-Tyler Van Drei-

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