Recently I have been being being bombarded with images of Kate Upton everywhere I look. An app for a game called Game of War: Fire Age, uses many pictures of Kate Upton’s breasts to lure people in. The advertisements for this game show clips of Kate in a tight, fitted corset style dress with her breasts spilling out over the top, in almost every clip the camera even zooms into a shot of just her breasts. By objectifying Kate Upton and using her body to sell a pixelated phone game, the developer of the game is only adding to the negative view of women in our society. More and more women are increasingly subjected to the oversexualization of their bodies to sell products and ideas.
Many men that I have talked to about this advertisement have said it was effective in gaining their interest in the game and that they downloaded the app simply because of all the commercials containing indecent images of Kate Upton. I have commonly seen this advertisement on a very popular trivia app, every time you play a turn the app forces you to watch the entirety of the commercial and then pauses for 3 seconds fixated on Kate’s breasts until it lets you exit out. I, for one, have not had any interest at all in downloading this game, not only because putting images like hers out there for a low-grade game is degrading to women, but because this only contributes to the idea that women are objects of sexual pleasure for men.
The worst part about this advertisement is that it is such a commonly known commercial, many young people, especially young girls, will see this image and think that is what they should be like. So many young people see images like this in our media and begin their view of women as sexual objects instead of people. The pressure is so high on young girls to be beautiful, and skinny, but have a big butt, and large breasts, and be seductive, but also innocent, this creates an impossible standard for young girls to live up to. It is no wonder so many young girls have a negative body image of themselves with countless advertisements like this being aired everyday.
I completely agree with what you are saying! I have the trivia crack app, and every time the Kate Upton ad comes pops up, I immediately close the app in anger. It's horrible that we are forced to watch that ad when all I want to do is answer trivia questions! It puts an unrealistically high standard on what women are supposed to look like WHILE IN WAR AND RIDING A HORSE! Not to mention holding a weapon. I can only imagine my 12 year old sister seeing this and thinking that she is not good enough or that she needs to change anything about herself. It's complete bullshit that young women have to see this kind of crap everywhere they go. Thank you for writing this.
ReplyDeleteNothing angers me more than a smart and pretty woman reduced to the size of her breasts. Kate Upton, unfortunately, falls victim to this too often.
ReplyDeleteIn the movie, The Other Woman, Kate's character is the sexy bombshell that every women thinks her man is cheating on her with. She's gorgeous, she's busty, but she doesn't have too much going on upstairs. Though she does ultimately lead to the discovery of (spoiler alert) Mark's embezzling scandal, her main comment of "we could kick him in the balls!" strikes me as annoying. The girls sit down and try to think of a way to make him hurt the way he hurt them, and that's the worst she could think of? I feel as if they just wanted her to be the eye-candy that draws in the male audience - and if that's her purpose, why make her smart, too?
But the over-sexualization of women in general, though, is one issue that I will never be able to get over. Women were not born to please men. Makeup, for me, is not for men but for myself, and the clothes I wear are comfortable and what I like. Many of my friends also share the same thoughts. I agree completely that those ads are annoying, and degrading. Men are their target audience, and this isn't excusing them, but they know what sells things to men - over-sexualize women or question their masculinity and you got 'em hooked. It's horrible that this is the world that young women are growing up in.