Invisible Women, Research Paper Example

Most Americans would not associate advertisements with women who face the challenge of physical disabilities. In fact, if the only media that was available were American advertisements it is quite possible that an individual could spend a lifetime immersed in media and never see a women with a handicap. If this statement seems extravagant, consider that fact that in scientific statistical analysis conducted by Reichart and Childers in 2006 indicated that over 75% of all advertisements used women only as decorative elements emphasizing physical attractiveness and youth. Goodman, Morris and Sutherland indicate a similar position in their article “Is Beauty a Joy Forever? Young Women’s Emotional Responses to Varying Types of Beautiful Advertising Models” (2008). In this article, the authors relate that “Advertisers use beautiful women to attract attention to products because they believe the beautiful are credible, desirable, and aspirational.” (Goodman, Morris, and Sutherland). The avoidance of showing disabled women in advertising in order to stereotype and exploit a gender-based image of beauty and wholeness is unethical when examined in a Utilitarian perspective. This is because the consequences of exploiting women’s body-images, spreading stereotypes of normalcy and discouraging the social acceptance of diversity detract from the greater good of society.

Utilitarianism is an ethical system that evolved out of Kantian ethics, and differs from Kantian ethics in several key ways. Graham, in his book: Eight Theories of Ethics (2004), writes that one of the distinguishing characteristics of Utilitarianism is that it includes not only actions that might be considered from a legal or purely social context, but perspectives that go beyond actions altogether. Graham asserts that “we can extend the principle of utility to include not just actions, but whole lives. It thus becomes a general view of the morally good life according to which the best human life will be one spent in maximizing the happiness and minimizing the pain in the world.” (Graham 131). By this, what graham means to imply is that moral issues transcend what can be defined by law or even systematic analysis. Moral behavior is in some part instinctive in that its central ideas are quite easily internalized.

Basically, what Utilitarianism dictates in a deontological sense is that ethical decisions be made in light of what action and result will lead to the most widespread happiness. There are two core components of this particular way of viewing ethics: one is based on a goal that is difficult to quantify, the other is easy to quantify, but often difficult to predict. For example, in the case of advertising, it is easy to quantify how many people are exposed to a particular kind of advertisement medium. At the same time, it is difficult to predict how many of those people may or may not suffer direct harm to their self-image or experience a greater degree of discrimination based on stereotypes that advertisements use and perpetuate. That said, it is still quite possible to examine the role of advertising in society through the lens of Utilitarian ethics. Through this perspective, three main reasons arise to support the notion that the failure to portray physically handicapped women in advertising is an unethical practice that fails to create a greater good for a greater number, but instead serves only an elite few.

The three reasons are: 1) that advertisements avoid portraying handicapped women in order to exploit conventional ideas of beauty and sexuality, 2) that advertisements attempt to create stereotypes of normalcy in order to weaken the self-image of their potential customers so they can sell products aimed at “correcting” their deficiencies, and 3) advertisements avoid showing handicapped women because they seek to suppress diversity and individuality which, in turn, feeds prejudicial stereotypes. In order to fully support these three points it is necessary to not only show evidence that each of the alleged activities and biases are, in fact, taking place; it is also necessary to show that these activities are direct violations of the deontological precepts of Utilitarianism. In order to fully demonstrate this last assertion, it is important to include a possible motive for the ethical violation as well as identifying as many of the perpetrators as is feasible. Motive and identity are two of the key aspects in understanding any unethical action and this is particularly true in regard to Utilitarianism.

The first step in establishing the opening point that advertisers exploit the image of women’s bodies in order to convey stereotypes of health and beauty is to define just what, exactly, advertisers find attractive from a physical standpoint. It goes without saying that images of handicapped women fall outside of the advertiser’s concept beauty and sexual attractiveness. So what is the image and ideal that advertisers are seeking when they use women’s bodies in their ad campaigns? According to Goodman, Morris, and Sutherland, methodical scientific research has established a list of characteristics that define “beauty” according to advertisers. These characteristics are based on extended research into the responses of a wide cross-section of participants in studies to determine what physical characteristics are most stimulating and attractive to the greatest number of people. Setting aside for a moment the question as to whether the research conducted in these areas is empirically accurate, there is still a question as to whether or not the results of the investigations are being accurately interpreted.

However, from the point of view of Utilitarianism, it makes little difference whether the advertisements techniques are successful. What matters are the cultural assumptions that are being acted upon by the advertisers and the impact that these actions have on society as a whole. As Goodman, Morris, and Sutherland make perfectly clear, the definition of beauty that the modern advertising media currently embodies is quite specific and seems to be centered on images of youth and vitality. According to the authors, “Research shows that society and media’s current characteristics of beauty include thin body, big eyes, full lips, flawless skin, and high cheekbones. All these attributes are hallmarks of youth…” (Goodman, Morris, and Sutherland). It is not only the evocation of youth and sexuality that is represented by the qualities listed above, it is the absence of other qualities: wrinkles, fat, scars and deformities that suggest a release from burden and the potential for social acceptance and inclusion.

While the reality is that women who face physical handicaps often embody the most heroic and competent characteristics that can be found in the human race, their absence from mainstream media imagery and advertising indicates that in the world of media-driven beauty, overcoming disability is undesirable because the products and services that are offered by companies that advertise are meant to cure or correct perceived deformities in appearance. One thing to keep in mind is that, for advertisers, the image of a disabled women, any disabled woman, no matter how powerful, smart, or capable, is an image of sickness. The inference is that products are used by healthy, happy people and that products help to keep people healthy and happy. Furthermore, ads offer the glorious promise of helping to make those who buy products more beautiful and desirable. According to Blackwell-stratton, Breslin, Mayerson, and Bailey, the basic message of the mainstream media is that disabled people are interchangeable with diseased people.

If the message of the sexually desirable woman is social inclusiveness, health, and youth, the image of the disabled woman is one of ostracization. The message is transmitted by way of omission and that message is very simple. It is that “disabled people can never fit into society unless they are cured.” (Blackwell-stratton, Breslin, Mayerson, and Bailey 308). This is an important consideration to keep in mind as we continue to discuss the ways in which advertisers generate stereotypes that exclude images of disabled women. The reason that it is so important is because the omission of images of disabled women sends as much of a social and cultural message as the steady parade of images of sexually desirable, stereotypically healthy women. These realities and others play a crucial factor in connecting the practices of advertisers with the idea of unethical behavior.

The unethical practices, as previously mentioned, extend to the creation of social stereotypes of “normalcy” that serve to create prejudice and disdain for handicapped people, particularly women. The accepted idea of “normal” for women, according to advertisers, is interchangeable with “sexually desirable” and any woman who falls outside of this narrow category is in some way or another portrayed as abnormal or sick. The simple fact is that “television bombards women with images of themselves as sex objects” (Blackwell-stratton, Breslin, Mayerson, and Bailey 308). This reduces the remarkable diversity of feminine qualities and individual characters of women to a single set of narrow attributes that are not actually connected to femininity at all, but are centered on commerce.

The stereotype of normalcy is so narrow, in fact, that it could never be statistically or factually true. In other words, more people are exceptions to the characteristics of beautiful and desirable than are actual embodiments of these ideals. This is the basis of selling products to people through advertising: that the products will “bridge” the gap between a given person’s flaws and the cultural stereotype of acceptability and beauty. In this paradigm, disabled or handicapped people are anchored at an extreme pole of undesirability. They represent a state of undesirability that cannot be cured. This is particularly true in the case of the self-image that is implied by advertisements about disabled women. Advertising makes it clear that for “the viewer who is both a woman and disabled … it is impossible to escape the reproach… How can she fight against the admonishment, seen not only on television but in every advertising medium, that a perfect body is essential for happiness?” (Blackwell-stratton, Breslin, Mayerson, and Bailey 306). This last observation that happiness is equitable with having a blemish-free body is the key to making the association of objectified women’s bodies with (often frivolous) products and services.

The creation of stereotypes of wholeness and healthiness is directly connected to the suppression of diversity of women’s images and capacities. In other words, it is not simply the depiction of women’s bodies that is an important consideration in the suppression of diversity, but what the depiction of the bodies represents – or fails to represent. The exclusion of images of handicapped women from advertising is not simply a matter of wanting to “gloss over” unpleasant physical deformities. It is an attempt to shatter the strength that diversity and the overcoming of personal challenges instills in the population. This is because these attainments and rewards cannot be bought and sold. They are also very difficult to associate in the public mind with the sale of products. This means that the narrow homogeneity that is desired by advertisers is an active strategy meant to suppress women’s individuality. The suppression of individuality replaces the self-reliance and resourcefulness that is most often factually associated with women and specifically disabled women with a dependence on products and media to derive self-identity and reinforce self-esteem.

What all of this actually amounts to is the figurative murder of women in the media. The disappearance of feminine diversity, including that which represents handicapped and disabled women is a step toward eliminating everything about women that is not based on youth and sexual desirability. As Sue Tornham remarks in Women, Feminism and Media (2007), the stereotyping of women in advertising is an act of cultural aggression that is meant to restrict the freedom of self-identity for millions and millions of women who are exposed to the media-conceived ideal of femininity. Tornham writes that “such images amount to the ‘symbolic annihilation’ of women.” (Thornham 6). The word annihilation may seem to be an exaggeration, but in reality it is an indication of the truly unethical basis of the depiction of women in advertising. The exclusion of images of disabled women is part of a larger scheme to control and exploit images of youth and sexuality in order to sell products.

The end-result of this media image of women is that it diminishes any capacity that women may have other than being desirable to men. The idea that the advertising stereotype of health and youth is also one that reinforces the diminishment of individuality leads both men and women to view women as little more than material goods like cars or houses. Perloff asserts in The Dynamics of Persuasion: Communication and Attitudes in the 21st Century (2003) that the stereotypes forwarded by advertisers often have genuine cultural reverberations beyond the mere buying and selling of products. Perloff writes that the stereotypes about women in advertisements help to foster cultural prejudices that diminish women as human beings. Perloff insists that “Boys develop an orientation toward careers, viewing women as trophies to acquire along the way.” (Perloff 52). Obviously, the suppression of diversity that is indicated by the omission of images of disabled women from advertisements extends much further than it might first appear. The cultural stereotypes that emerge from such practices result in the authentic suppression of personhood and individuality in society.

The realities cited above indicate quite clearly that the exclusion of disabled women from advertising has as much of an impact on the non-disabled community as on the disabled community itself. This fact underscores one of the more cruel features of the way that advertising works. It is not they advertisers seek to demean or hurt disabled women; they actually want to exploit them, through omission by using the threat of social ostracization to sell their products. In some strange way, the negative impacts that can be demonstrated to be inflicted on society through the practices of advertisers points in an inverse relation to the capacity of society that embraced diversity and shunned social stereotypes. The outcome of such an inversion must be imagined as an evolution in social awareness and cultural productivity because the present system can be demonstrated to serve the ownership class of society while exploiting the mass majority of the population.

This in a nutshell is why the exclusion of images of disabled women from advertising can be viewed as a violation of Utilitarian ethics. Since the end of Utilitarianism is to foster the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people, it is quite evident that the stereotyped exploitation of women stands as a breach of the deontological basis of Utilitarianism. That said, there are, of course, objections that can be made to some of the foregoing assertions. One of the core counter-arguments that is liable to be raised against the ideas forwarded above is that Utilitarianism actually encourages the selective omission of disabled women from advertising imagery. This counter-argument would be based in the following kind of reasoning.

First of all, one might argue that since disabled women comprise such a small part of the population, they are not relevant to the greater happiness among the total population. Graham writes in Eight Theories of Ethics (2004) that in regard to the fact that children often laugh spontaneously at handicapped people: “On the assumption that the handicapped are a small minority, it is perfectly possible that the pleasure given to the majority, if given full rein, would outweigh the pain caused to a minority and so accord with the Greatest Happiness Principle.” (Graham 135) In regard to the issue of advertising this would mean that the exclusion of images of disabled women bring happiness to a greater number of people than the omission harms. However, this reasoning is specious because Utilitarianism offers a refinement known as “rule Utilitarianism.” This idea indicates that “while there may indeed be occasions when an action commonly regarded as abhorrent would contribute more to the general happiness, its abhorrence arises from the fact that it is contrary to a rule which itself is most conducive to the greatest happiness.” (Graham 136). Therefore, the underlying stereotyping and limiting of women’s self-image that is indicated in advertising fails to promote the greater good.

Advertisements use the image of women’s bodies to associate their products with the promise of youth and sexual virility. In doing so, the conspicuously avoid showing images of disabled women. This leads to a proliferation of cultural stereotypes that ultimately damage the personhood and individuality of women. Because the exploitation of women’s bodies in advertising is used as a method to gain material wealth for an elite few while fostering damaging stereotypes over the wider population, the exclusion of disabled women from advertising can be regarded as a strong part of the deontological failing of advertisers. Their unethical practices have also led, as the preceding discussion evidences, to a range of negative cultural and social impacts in the population at large.

Works Cited

Fine, Michelle, and Adrienne Asch, eds. Women with Disabilities: Essays in Psychology, Culture, and Politics. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1988.

Goodman, J. Robyn, Jon D. Morris, and John C. Sutherland. “Is Beauty a Joy Forever? Young Women’s Emotional Responses to Varying Types of Beautiful Advertising Models.” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 85.1 (2008): 147+.

Graham, Gordon. Eight Theories of Ethics. London: Routledge, 2004.

Perloff, Richard M. The Dynamics of Persuasion: Communication and Attitudes in the 21st Century. 2nd ed. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003.

Thornham, Sue. Women, Feminism and Media. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2007.