By Jessica Moore

"That's one of advertisements most brilliant accomplishments," says Bernard McGrane, sociologist and a former professor of Boihem's, "to get us to believe that we're not affected by it." According to Sut Jhally, sociologist and founder of The Media Education Foundation, "the most powerful propaganda system is that which doesn't allow itself to be recognized as propaganda. It appears to be the way the world is - it appears naturalized."

The fact is that people are influenced by advertising, and advertisers know this. Why else would companies spend over $200 billion a year on advertising? According to the well-known advertising critic Jean Kilbourne, in her new book titled Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising, "far from being a passive mirror of society, advertising is an effective and pervasive medium of influence and persuasion, and its influence is cumulative, often subtle, and primarily unconscious." Advertising creates an entire cultural worldview, shaping our attitudes and beliefs.

To persuade consumers that they "need" to buy their products, companies consciously make people feel dissatisfied with what they already have and try to convince us that we are lacking something. Advertising is used to create the idea of a "defect" in the consumer, a defect that can only be remedied by the product they are selling. "Advertising," says McGrane, is "the opposite of therapy... it's designed to generate an inner sense of conflict with ourselves."

Creating a sense of constant need is what convinces people to buy things they otherwise wouldn't. It requires making people feel the constant stress and anxiety of not being "attractive" or "fashionable" enough.

Distorting Women's Self Image
The anxiety girls and women experience from feeling unattractive is arguably one of the most pervasive and damaging consequence of advertising. Only one body type is almost always presented in the media and in advertisements -- that of a very tall, thin woman -- a woman who would meet the criteria for anorexia as 15% below normal weight (APA 1994). In reality, this unhealthy body shape is unattainable for 99% of women (Kilbourne 1997).

Many times, even these "beautiful" women are deemed not good enough for advertisements. Photographs are airbrushed or otherwise altered to remove any lines, bumps, or lumps - anything less than "perfection." If the ideal of beauty is physically unattainable, then consumers will never be able to attain the image they want, and therefore there will be an endless demand for new beauty products.

This is the reason for the incredible proliferation of the weight-loss, fashion, and cosmetics industries, which are among the largest and most profitable consumer industries.

As a result, the millions of women and girls who are unable to reach this standard of beauty feel a sense of failure, shame, and guilt. This dissatisfaction with one's body is a major cause of eating disorders, which have increased through the years as women's ideal body weight as it is portrayed in the media has decreased (Wiseman, Gray, Mosimann, & Ahrens, 1992). One study revealed that women who view the media's image of beauty as ideal are more likely than any other group to have a very negative body image (Pinhas, et. al. 1999).

10-15% of Americans suffer from a serious eating disorder (Eating Disorders Recovery Online). The Harvard Eating Disorders Center reports that 80% of women wake up each morning feeling depressed about their appearance. According to Time magazine, 80% of all children have been on a diet by the time they have reached fourth grade. "I think we're seeing eating disorders in younger and younger individuals... as young as 5 or 6," states Dr. Ira Sacker, director of the eating disorders clinic at Brookdale University Hospital and co-author of Dying to Be Thin.

Men are also increasingly suffering from eating disorders. Judy Teffer, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, estimates that about 12% of Americans with eating disorders are men. It is no coincidence that the images of lean, muscular men in magazines and TV commercials have been significantly increasing in recent years, along with weight-loss and bulk-up products for men.

Another serious problem is the fact that ads almost always portray women as sex objects, in order to increase the appeal of their product. This significantly affects the way women think about themselves, particularly young women, because it is during the adolescent stage of life that young people develop their sense of self and identity. This sends the underlying message to women and girls that the only important thing about themselves is the way they look, causing many women to believe that their self-worth is dependent upon attention from men.

Commodification of women as sex objects has a very detrimental effect on girls and women. The constant abuse of women's sexuality to sell products in the beer, sports, film and music industries, for example, has completely distorted our understanding of sexuality and gender roles.

The commodification of women undoubtedly contributes to the high incidents of rape and physical assault in our society. In the US, a woman is raped every 3 minutes, and 55% of women report having experienced rape and/or physical assault in their lifetime (Sisterhood Is Global Institute, 1998).

Under capitalism, corporations will do anything to make a buck, including forcing girls and women to suffer health problems, low self-esteem, depression, and the adoption of subservient roles in society.

What's Socialism Got to Do With It?

In our capitalist economy, corporations must either create new markets or expand existing ones in order to out-compete their rivals. Companies are driven to artificially create a demand for products through deceptive advertising. This is the reason why advertising is such an essential part of capitalism.

Advertising sells products based on an image, an illusion, rather than the actual use it has. Nike shoes are not simply a shoe, but supposedly a gateway into another life. Modern capitalism has taken this commodity fetishism to an extreme. In a rational, socialist society, products would be evaluated by their actual utility rather than a mystifying image.

Although advertising is a fundamental part of capitalist society, it is completely unnecessary for the functioning of a healthy society. The profit motive which drives the fashion, clothing, and cosmetics industries needs to be removed altogether. This can only be done by taking these corporations into public ownership.

Approximately 7 media conglomerates own 80% of all media outlets. These 7 corporations must be taken out of private hands and made public property. Only then would TV, movies, magazines, radio stations, and Hollywood be run for human need, rather than corporate greed. All types of views can be represented in the media, but decisions should be made by direct involvement of representatives elected from community, youth and labor organizations.

The largest corporations, such as Coca-Cola and Nike, spend up to 1/3 of their operating budgets on advertising. The pharmaceutical industry spent almost $2 billion on advertising in 2000, according to the American Medical News. That's up from $300 million in 1997 (Philadelphia Inquirer, 10/7/00).

The billions of dollars wasted on advertising could be used to provide free higher education and quality health care for all. The millions of jobs in marketing and advertising could be replaced with useful jobs such as cleaning up the environment or building mass transit systems. This is impossible under capitalism, but it would be the reality in a socialist society where ordinary people were in control instead of a few corporate billionaires.

In a democratic socialist society, companies would no longer need to continually increase profits in order to out-compete their rivals. There would be no need to manipulate people's minds to sell a product. The onslaught of advertisements, telemarketers, and junk mail could be replaced with a variety of voluntary systems for consumers, from informational directories on the internet to published catalogues.

Consumers would have democratic input and high quality products would be built to last. Unlike in the former USSR (which was a Stalinist dictatorship), public companies in a genuine socialist society would be under democratic workers control and management, and would offer a variety of quality products to meet different consumer tastes.

Imagine a society with no billboards staring you in the face, nothing but music on the radio, no flashing ads on the internet, and no commercials on TV!

In a socialist society, the arts and culture would flourish. Instead of billboards along the highway, suitable spaces would be created where artists could display their artwork, and the arts would be properly funded. Corporate control over the content of TV and news programs would be ended. A dramatically shorter workweek would give people the time and energy to do all the creative things they had always wanted to do, but never found time for.

Socialism would lay the basis for women's liberation. Socializing domestic labor and family functions is the only practical way to liberate women from the double burden they face under capitalism.

Economic equality, decent living standards, free abortion on demand, and community provision of free health care, child care, and elderly care would lift a huge burden off women's shoulders. Advertising would no longer suffocate and distort women's sense of self-worth. A society based on equality and mutual respect would finally eliminate the second class status women have held for thousands of years.

Justice #29 March 2002