Advertising Shame

I find it so interesting that women are expected to have an entire beauty regimen, and good beauty habits are expected and of much more importance in women, it seems to me, than men. And since it seems that most advertising aims, “to make sure girls learned ‘to conform to the accepted social pattern of appearance and behavior’” (Peril, 42), these expectations about beauty and cleanliness are present in full force. I have to see an advertisement for a specific product to take care of unfresh or unpleasant odor for a man’s ‘down there.’ However, women are continuously bombarded with products insinuating that we are not clean enough, not fresh enough, and not to jump on my soap box too much, but that our vaginas themselves are gross. There is a skit in the Vagina Monologues about this topic and I am in agreement with its message. Stein and Kim’s chapter talks about how, “if it’s done right, a good ad also manages to sell emotions, fantasies, fears, and lifestyles” (Stein & Kim, 113). By making women feel that their bodies, specifically their vaginas, are inherently unclean, you create a market for a problem that previously never existed. I come from a family of women, very open, talkative women at that, and we still do not talk about the specifics of menstruation. We only describe how we feel or if it has or has not started. Strangely enough, the conversations do not go any farther than that. And while I do not necessarily feel shame in regards to my period, I do have to fight against the message that it is a disgusting and secretive occurrence. I suppose in many ways, “Femcare ads have successfully tapped into the centuries-old message that the process itself is unspeakable and a source of deep shame” (Stein & Kim, 114) even in the most critically aware of us. The website readings reminded me of an article I read in the Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/30/the-gendered-advertising-remixer_n_1391354.html about how different the ads (I thought about the ones on Saturday morning cartoons) are for girls and boys. I thought the remixer was a great way to show this contrast.