Sexual Imagery in Advertising

For my final blog for this Comm 112 class, I have decided to write on the topic of my final project: Sexual Imagery in Advertising.
As a class we have watched online videos entitled Killing Us Softly and Dream Worlds. I found these particular videos extremely fitting for my project topic. They talk about how sex is such an overpowering part of advertising and everyday life, today more than ever. The following links provide segments from each of the movies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDMo5cIJN3A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FpyGwP3yzE&feature=PlayList&p=0FB656A37B7E6DC5&index=0
It is really amazing to me what these videos had to say about advertising. I always knew that sex played a role in all sorts of the media, but I never realized it played this much of a role. In Killing Us Softly it says that advertising had a $120 billion revenue, as of 1999. Now that it is ten years later I can only imagine what that number must be at now.
Killing us softly also stated that the average American is exposed to about 3000 advertisements every day. Again, that is an amazing statistic to me, however now that I think on it it’s probably close accurate for me. It’s crazy to think that advertisements of all shapes, sizes, and forms come in contact with our lives so much every day!
The movie Dream Worlds, is more about the music video industry, but it also ties right along in with the idea that women are suppose to be something that they are not. Both videos showed how these forms of media are making women seem more like objects than actual beings. The camera will focus on a woman’s breasts, butt or skinny body, in order to objectify that that is what makes her a woman.
These “perfected” images that have been placed in both men’s and women’s head’s are almost unachievable. And the worst part is that women of all sizes, shapes, and ages are giving into these false images, and trying to become the beautiful women they see in the advertisements or videos. I admit that I too, have dieted to “look better” many times, but some women starve themselves to become the pretty faces and perfected bodies they see in the magazines.
So the question here is, when will women be seen as beautiful just as they are, without dieting or surgeries? Will that day ever come, or has society tattooed these images into every human beings mind?