Advertising aimed for male gaze vs. advertising that attempts to sell to women are a bit different. For male gaze advertisement, women are reduced to an ownable

Advertising aimed for male gaze vs. advertising that attempts to sell to women are a bit different. For male gaze advertisement, women are reduced to an ownable sex object, typically parts of their face will be hidden or out of frame. You'll also see ads where the actual product is turned into a women or made to look like a women (for a media definition of a women looks like, in any case). Ads targeted towards women use other women to try and sell you the product so you can achieve what the ad represents the woman having. In both cases, the ads are alienating. In male gaze ads women are explicitly not desired except as an object, so there's a very direct alienation there. For advertising selling to women, the ads serve to highlight elements that a women should have or is missing to in order to be the ideal, which is alienating as there is no such thing as an ideal women and everyone's needs are different. I mentioned it earlier, but Killing Us Softly is a nice video lecture that covers a lot of this kind of material (this link is trailer only, I'm afraid): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTlmho_RovY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTlmho_RovY