By Alethea Tyler

This ad is absolutely ridiculous. First of all, I have no idea what they are advertising.  I had to look it up.  Redtape is a store for men’s apparel, footwear, and accessories. What do those women have to do with any of those things? Second of all, the women in this picture have become an object, one hundred percent. Not only are they in a vending machine looking like dolls, but they are being bought.  By a male.  This shows who is dominant in the situation.  Who do you think? The women stuck in glass boxes or the man with the ability to free one of them by purchasing her based off of looks? There is no point in objectifying women in this way, yes sex sells, but only because we let it.  And if we protest against these kind of ads then we will begin to see a change, but only then.

The relationship between sexist advertising and sexual assault and relationship abuse may not be extremely obvious, but the thing is, they have much more to do with one another than one may think. This picture displays the male being in control. What we don’t realize is that on a daily basis we are bombarded with up to 5,000 ads.  That means that we are seeing messages similar to that 5,000 times a day and 1,825,000 a year. It is guaranteed to have some effect on us.  This is guaranteed to have some effect on us. 84% of spouse abuse victims are female. Could this have some correlation with what is presented in the media? If we are seeing 730,000 ads a day and to be fair and have some faith in humanity, 600,000 of them are sexist, than we are repeatedly having the idea of one gender being dominant over the other 600,000 times a year.

This sets up expectations of what a typical heterosexual relationship will be like.  It also is disrespectful to women. Nobody forced them to do that right? In most cases yes, they are hired actresses.  But it is the norm for women to have no power in these ads, or be hyper sexualized. Here are some more examples: