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Project 3: Uncovering Sexualization in Society
Project 3: Uncovering Sexualization in Society
Overview of the Video:
Overview of the Video:
In 2010, Carl's Jr released an ad promoting their new cranberry-apple walnut chicken salad. This commercial showcase's social influencer and fashion icon, Kim Kardashian. Kardashian is shown flaunting about in a hotel room, making the bed, and running a bath. You might be wondering why an ad meant for salad is set in a hotel room with a socialite. Well, here's why: for gross entertainment. Carl's Jr wanted to produce an ad that would get people's attention, rather than a boring commercial about lettuce. Although the alleged intention of the ad was to endorse a new menu item, the idea was lost in translation. This advertisement is a perfect example of how society uses sexualization tactic through the media.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Sexualization in Media:
Sexualization in Media:
In figure 1, it shows Kim Kardashian indulging in a crisp apple from the Carl's Jr salad. In the video, she is shown climbing into the bathtub and blowing bubbles (Figure 2). Being in a bathtub does not have much in common with the new salad for Carl's Jr. They put it in the commercial as a sexual tease. They wanted you to picture yourself being in the bathtub with Mrs. Kardashian and eating their new product. "All women are vulnerable in a culture in which there is such wide-spread objectification of women's bodies, such glorification of disconnection, so much violence against women, and such blaming of the victim." (Kilbourne p.504). You rarely see a man put into a soapy bathtub for the purpose of sexual objectification. Women are sexually objectified and antagonized daily.
Women are sexualized in even the simplest of things. Kardashian is shown in figure 3 laying on a bed in a rather intriguing pose. "The poses and postures of advertising are often borrowed from pornography..." (Kilbourne 489). Just before the picture was taken, Kardashian was making up the bed. I believe the bed was included in the video to hint at the sexual encounters that may take place there. Although Mrs. Kardashian is very beautiful, and she is gifted with a pretty face; her face was not the intended image the directors wanted to audience to focus on.
Figure 3
Self-Worth:
Self-Worth:
Figure 4 is clearly of Kardashian's breasts. This image was included only for the pleasure of the audience. Her breasts have nothing to do with the Carl's Jr salad and yet they have their own close up shot. In Kilbourne's other piece, Killing Us Softly 4, she states "camera's purposely focus on the women's breasts, which diminishes many women's confidence in their own bodies" (Killing Us Softly 4). Not only are women being judged by men, they're also being by other women and themselves. The pressure to be beautiful is always on.
In the picture on the left (Figure 5), it shows Kardashian taking a bite of some of the new salad. It is zoomed in on her mouth to allude to oral sex. She is shown taking a big bite and making her mouth and lips look full and puckered. She then makes eye contact with the camera to establish intimacy and seduction. "Sex in advertising is pornographic because it dehumanizes and objectifies people, especially women, and because it fetishizes products, imbues them with an erotic charge" (Kilbourne 489). Society has a way of taking items with no erotic charge and turning them into a sexual fetish.
Conclusion:
Conclusion:
You can see the sexualization throughout the whole video. It is such a norm for today's society for women to be looked at like objects, that we are used to it. It is common for everyone to be judged, but women especially get the harshest parts. People might see this commercial and think nothing of it because it is like most commercials airing today; but this should not be acceptable. It is ads like this one that target women to sexualize and objectify them. As a woman, I am used to growing up and seeing ads like this and wishing that I looked like the woman in these frames. But, we should teach future generations that beauty comes from within and you are only as pretty as your personality.
Works Cited:
Works Cited:
Kilbourne, Jean. "Three Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt." Rereading America. Eds. Colombo, Cullen, Lisle. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's P. 2013.
Killing Us Softly 4. Perf. Jean Kilbourne. Dir. Sut Jhally. Media Education Foundation, 2011.
“Kim Kardashian Carl's Jr. Commercial.” 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzmFrcuwuuo. Accessed 22 Oct. 2020.
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