“Why is that woman wearing that on the street corner? She’s only in a bikini, sunglasses and a straw hat. Holding a sign. What does it say? Is she protesting? She’s so still…Oh my God! It’s a mannequin advertising a sale. A sale for…mattresses?! What?”
These were my thoughts as I came to a stop at an intersection abutting a small mattress shop on Fourth Street N.
Then the anger started as I realized their little ploy had worked. I looked. I knew about the sale. The busty mannequin with the Mona Lisa smile turned my head to their store.
It’s the 21st century and everyone knows: Sex sells.
But which sex?
What does a mostly naked emulation of a woman’s body have to do with mattresses? Nothing. But I’m willing to bet an oversized Ken doll wouldn’t have drawn as many stares. That’s what the shop owners are banking on, because that’s the norm in our society.
Women’s bodies have been idealized to the point of near-impossibility.
Magazine covers flaunt women who have been re-touched, cinched in, busts enhanced, made blemish-free, given a healthy glow, had their hair made thicker, their lips poutier, their arms toned up, their bums round but their thighs lean.
Their eyes look like they’ve never lost a bit of sleep and they are shadowed to just the right level of demure, or maybe just flat-out enlarged, à la Disney princess.
These pictures of women, who don’t actually exist, call to us from billboards and commercials, movie posters and grocery store waiting lines. They bombard us with their unattainable “beauty,” daring us to strive for their ideals or purchase a product their hourglass silhouette endorsed.
Men are also represented with idealistic standards in advertising, granted, but not nearly to the extent women are. It is unacceptable to objectify either gender, but at this present moment in time, women certainly bear the brunt of it.
In contrast to the portrayal of men, just smiling faces with a bangin’ bod isn’t always enough to really get the product out there. Women’s bodies are often deconstructed to just their sexy parts in order to get the public’s attention.
Sometimes, it’s just close-ups of cleavage, curvy legs or a jawline with a tongue poking out of freshly-painted lips coquettishly.
I’ll leave it to others better educated in psychology than me to decipher the “why.” But suffice it to say, we all look. Men and women.
And we all buy.
My guess is that, at this point, we’re indoctrinated to do just that. If you’re told from childhood that, “This is sexy, this is exciting, this gets your blood flowing, this is what everyone wants to be,” the phrases become internalized, automatic, thoughtless —a part of our culture.
I want it to stop. Those images, manipulated though they are, come from a source: Women. Real women, who think, laugh, cry, get sick, have tempers, have careers, have hopes, dreams, and experiences unique to themselves.
They are humans. Not objects to be perfected and placed beside other objects as if there were any comparison.
This is my body and my human experience. It turns my stomach to see other women reduced to mere things, because even if I’m not the one being photographed, what’s to stop someone from looking at me like that?
Women need to take a stand, as a nation, and prove to the advertisers that this is unacceptable.
Boycott businesses until they prove the value of their product on its own merit. Stop buying things because a corporation has put together a crack team of photoshop minions.
A tall order, I understand, given the pervasiveness of this ill within our society. However, if we would really all, as a gender, decide we deserve better representation, the turnaround would be swift.
We represent immense purchasing power. All I’m asking is to give it some thought
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a mannequin to topple.
Moriah Parrish is a junior majoring in psychology. She can be reached for comments, discussion and sexist billboard graffiti planning parties at parrishm@mail.usf.edu.
