Project 5

Works sited

Snickers. "Snickers "Sexy carwash"- original". Youtube. Uploaded by tiedmann101, 14 Jul. 2009, https://youtu.be/PWsuYtI3KLE

Jean Kilbourne. "Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt". 1999.

Women in Advertisements, and the Toll it Takes

Unfortunatley in comes as no suprise, that even in the 21st century, women are still being objectified for the viewing pleasure of men, at the expense of her own self image, and sometimes even safety. In this text I will be discussing the Snickers "Sexy Carwash" commericial in relation to Kilbourne's "Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt."

The Commercial starts with a wide view of a big city. Dance music plays in the background and it cuts to a montage women in bathing suits and undwerwear seductivley washing cars. A lot of the women are covered in water and soap, and they lay on top of the cars or seductivley put their bodies on the windows and doors. There are a few shots of just breasts and backsides. The commercial ends with a man infront of a line of cars, covering them in mud and stuffing cash into his pocket. While eating a snickers, of course.

Figure 1, a women laying on the back of a car while a man watches.

Male Gaze

Here a woman lies on the back of a car, and very uniffeiciently cleans it with a towel. She's in a bathing suit and posing seductivley. Fine on the surface, but then we see a man peering at her through the back window, looking at her like she is a piece of meat while she's unaware. The woman might as well be a speciemen in a lab or toy behind plastic packaging, to this man she is not a person. "Sex in advertising is pornographic because it dehumanizes and objectifies people, especially women, and because it fetishizes products, imbues them wih an erotic charge,which dooms us to dissapointment since products can never fufill our sexual desires," (Kilbourne).

Figure 2, a woman in a bikini covering herself with soap.

Objectification

In this image a woman is covering herself with soapy water in a seductive manner. A lot of the women in the video put on a spectacle for the men. If someone was just washing her car- it would not be this complicated.

Figure 3, man covering cars in mud turns and looks at the car wash.

Power Dynamic

Lastly, we have the man profiting off of the objectification of the women. This is a perfect example of the power dynamic in advertsising, as well as just our society. KIlbourne says itperfectly in her opeining lines, "Sex in advertisement is more about disconnection and distance than conection and closeness. Its also more often about power than passion, about violence than violins." (Kilbourne) This man is fully clothed, and rather dirty and grimey to be frank, and he is gainingfrom the objectification of the beautiful, bareley clothed women.

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