Is advertising manipulative; can it be controlling, or is it fueling the demand of the American economy? The exhaustive battle of what advertising is and what its not is never-ending and both ends of the spectrum can only battle with statistics, words, and opinions on the fact of the matter. Many arguments have arisen since the establishment of the advertising industry and everyone sheds their own light on the subject. In Beauty and the Beast of Advertising, Jean Kilbourne argues that the advertising industry portrayal of women is narrow-minded and produces emotional and psychological problems within women in regards with their roles in society, their physical appearance, and sexual attitudes. She also emphasizes how the world of advertising creates artificiality among women. On another note, the author of What Advertisement Isnt, John OToole, takes a look at how the government has too much control of and poorly regulates advertising, how it is not deceptive on a subconscious level, and how advertising is a sales tool and should not be evaluated by journalistic or any other standards. These two arguments talk about issues in advertising that interconnect on broader levels but essentially are speaking of two different levels of advertisements. Kilbourne looks at advertising as a guideline that women of today abide by. She argues that women in advertisements are portrayed as a sex object or a housewife. She goes on to say how the advertising housewife is obsessed with cleanliness and lemon fresh scents(238). She also states that the sex object is a mannequin, a shell(238). Her physical appearance is the only beauty about her. This conventional beauty is what all advertisement women are conformed to. Women of today are constantly bombarded with this ideal and feel they have to live up to the norm, and if they dont then they are undesirable then feel guilty about it. According to Kilbourne advertising creates artificiality in...
