ABSTRACT
The way women are portrayed in advertising is a subject that has interested social scientists for many years. Sociologist Erving Goffman‧s Gender Advertisements, published in 1976, found that women are generally portrayed in advertisements as weaker and smaller than males and subservient to them. The exploitation of women‧s sexuality, known as “sexploitation,” is also a major problem that feminist critics of the media complain about. Women are turned in many advertisements into little more than sexual objects whose bodies, breasts, and other sexually exciting features are exploited by advertisers. In many advertisements we do not see the whole woman, but only part of her—which suggests that women are not seen as persons but as beings with certain body parts of particular interest to men.
