Hey guys, I'm going to be very short. So today I was scanning through the Express Newspaper and came across this COLDair Air-conditioning Units ad.
*deep long sigh*. I know we've been talking a lot about the way advertising companies portray women, so why am I shocked at this ad? I guess it's because its local and I naively didn't expect it. I mean it's AIR CONDITIONING!
This ad clearly shows laziness and a lack of creativity, I feel as though their mentality was "eh alright team, hear this na, I think we should just slap ah sexy gal on da dey, yeh make sure she bam bam cock out!, ite nice this ad ready to go!"
So COLDair we'reNOT impressed, unacceptable.
For those of you who haven't read our previous blog on this topic: ARE WE ONLY OUR BODIES?
Some ads can be so offensive and I have to wonder if the Ad companies actually realize that the ads will be offensive but they just don't care. The sad thing is that the ads tend to hit the company where it hurts and then they apologize after.
Looking at these ads I wonder how they feel after it backfired in their faces.
This billboard is for play station and a white woman is holding a black woman face and the words read "white is coming". Now mind you, the woman is so dark , very dark and almost cannot be recognized...not so smart of an ad.
Black people alone are not offended by ads, here we have Ashton Kutcher playing an Indian character 'Raj' in a Pop Chips commercial/ parody and it backfired on them. I am guessing the Ad company thought the Ad would be funny but it was very offensive for Indians.
Can anyone remember the burger king ad with Mary J Blige, the black community kicked up a fuss saying that burger king was stereotyping black people and fried chicken. hmmmm. The Ad cost 2 million to make and had to be pulled after causing outrage.
This next ad from Intel was just downright disgusting, the picture had a white man standing between some black men in a 'set' position, as if running a race and a headline that read "maximise the power of your employees".. Intel tried pulling the ad before it was published but it was release somehow. How stupid can you be.
Even though some Ads are outright racist and offensive, Ad companies still continue to publish them and then have to put their tails between their legs and beg the public for forgiveness.
Hey everyone, I know its been a while since we've posted. I guess we all could agree that school is getting the best of us. Lets get right into it, for those of you who did not know, Mr Ian Alleyne is back on air and in full flight!
Yesterday, afternoon I tuned into TV6 hoping to see some updates of the gruesome death of 6 yr old Keyana Cumberbatch. Unfortunately, Crime Watch was on and immediately the new theme for its Intro caught my attention.
Pay attention to the video:
What is the purpose of those women in bikinis??
In the beginning a young lady was even seen assisting Mr Alleyne to dress himself, which begs the question is he handicap? brr?
WHAT DOES THIS LADY'S BOOBIES HAVE TO DO WITH FIGHTING CRIME?
And we aren't the only people that feel this way here are some other reactions that share similar sentiments
Why couldn't one lady be portrayed as a police officer, or someone assisting in fighting crime?
Which brings us back to square one with one of our earlier blog posts "ARE WE ONLY ARE BODIES"
If you haven't read it as yet, sort out yuh self ...
Hi everyone, this post is going to be lighter than our usual posts. I know we've been talking a lot about the negatives in advertisements and media a lot, but this time we'll highlight some good advertisements. These ads, portray women, blacks and the elderly in a respectful and beautiful way.
I don't know about you'll, but after I saw these ads, I thought about I'm going to Pennywise and pick up a couple of Dove products. These images are so very unique and uplifting. It represents a particular type of woman that have been forgotten in the media. Elderly and full figured woman.
It is evident that this Dove campaign is trying to slowly alter the definition of beauty, that have been given to us, as skinny, young and light skin.
Well you might say "well duh!" they needed to use this elderly lady for this campaign, its a pro-age commercial, well I've seen companies who did not.
For example Estee Lauder:
AS I AM NATURAL HAIR PRODUCTS
Dark skin and natural hair, decently dress, Black O'man
Another portrayal of a Black woman in advertisement done right.
Here's the video
None of them indecently dressed, there butts or boobs exposed. None of the were acting loud and obnoxious.It shows that black woman can be classy and sophisticated.It was very uplifting watching this video, as simple as it was. I was happy to be identified with the race portrayed. Which is seldom, on many occasions, after watching television and advertisement.
Here's the Nike's online campaign
This campaign took attributes that we as women are used to hearing need to be changed- big butts, big thighs, "manly shoulders"- and instead , it celebrates them.
It also shows women in a different light, from being the weaker and inferior gender, whose role is in the kitchen or taking care of kids, usually portrayed in advertisement, and shows that we can be strong and fit as well, a profile usually reserved for men in advertisements.
Although the reality is that the things these advertising campaigns want us to experience like physical power, self-esteem, accomplishment, self-love, a sense of self-worth cannot be purchased, if more advertisements were to convey these types of messages, then more individuals, especially women and people of African descent self perception would be positively impacted.
Have you ever noticed that in many newscast, the journalist will choose the most uneducated (no disrespect), bad spoken black person to use for their story? It seems as though the media creates a damaging stereotype that depicts blacks as lazy, violent and dumb. The sad thing is that black people have been portrayed as being negative for decades and it seems like it will continue for decades more. Some news station are guilty of reinforcing stereotypes of black people.
As an intern at CCN TV6 and working out in the field, I can tell you that journalist will interview a few people and choose the one that THEY feel will capture the audience's attention, even if it means putting a fool on air. Many times black people are unfairly and unrealistically portrayed on television and it gives the audience a perception that black people are a dumb race.
Case # 1: On July 28th, 2010, North Alabama WAFF-48 news reported that local police are searching for a man who broke into a home then got into bed with one Kelly Dodson. She woke up to find the intruder on her bed. Kelly's brother Antoine Dodson rushed to her room after hearing his sister scream and after a brief struggle the intruder escaped through a window. Antoine said the suspect left behind his shirt and fingerprints.
Due to the mannerism of her brother, the media quickly turned the story into comedy ignoring the issue of a girl claiming she was sexually assaulted.
Here's a look at the report as well as the remix for his comments. He became an instant internet sensation and was able to buy a house with the money he received from all the publicity. He may have moved one step closer to living the American dream, but in the minds of the public he remains an ignorant black man.
Case # 2: On the morning of April 7th, 2012, a three alarm fire broke out at an Oklahoma City apartment complex, The local station KFOR News Channel was among the first to arrive on the scene and interview one of the displaced residents Sweet Brown. In the interview Sweet Brown uttered "aint nobody got time for that" which became one of the more memorable lines in the reporting. Again her mannerism left a lot on the mind of the audience.
Here's a look at the report.
The two cases above made them overnight internet sensations and even landed them either advertisement deals or on prominent talk shows.
I will leave you with a quote that i find rather interesting from Larry Davis, Dean of School of Social Work in a discussion about the damaging psychological effects that negative media have on African males.
" One of the most important things any group of people can do is to control the image of themselves"
We pass by this billboard every Friday, some of us more frequently than others. As we stated in our previous blog."Even when companies make an attempt, they always use a light negro girl/boy with natural hair or a dark skin girl with curly/straight hair. If they happen to throw in a black person with natural hair they are never the focus."
Here we see it again, Hart's billboard. All the other races were properly represented, nothing added or taken away. Yet when it came to the representation of black women their identity was tampered with. You may say well, "Half ah them dark gal and them doh use they natural hair anyway" and that's a fact, but what exactly influenced that behavior in the first place?
Not to mention they're in the minority once again.
Research conducted by Eletra S. Gilchrist, Ph.D Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. "Media Effects and Black Hair Politics" Stated:
"Findings revealed that the images African-American women consume from Black hair magazine advertisements do impact what they consider to be beautiful and, subsequently, influence their day-to-day styling and hair care mechanisms, lending further support to the idea that the media serve as powerful sources of knowledge."
Hey Everyone, Its been short while since we posted anything, school work get's the better of us at times, but I found this article that I taught was really interesting and would like to share just an excerpt from it to view the entire article follow the link:
No Disrespect
In February 2012, PBS host Tavis Smiley interviewed Viola Davis and Octavia Spencerabout their Oscar nominations for their roles as Aibileen and Minny, Jim Crow–era domestic workers in The Help. "I'm pulling for both of you to win on Academy Award night," Smiley ventured. "But there's something that sticks in my craw about celebrating Hattie McDaniel so many years ago for playing a maid"—a reference to the actor who won for her role as Mammy in 1939's Gone with the Wind. "I want you to win," Smiley concluded, "but I'm ambivalent about what you're winning for."
Davis countered that it is hard for black actresses to find multifaceted roles in Hollywood, and that pressure from the black community to eschew portrayals that are not heroic makes it even harder: "That very mind-set that you have, and that a lot of African-Americans have, is absolutely destroying the black artist…. If your criticism is that you just don't want to see the maid...then I have an issue with that. Do I always have to be noble?"
For black women, particularly those in the public eye, the answer to this question is often a resounding "Yes." They are required to be noble examples of black excellence. To be better. To be respectable. And the bounds of respectability are narrowly defined by professional and personal choices reflecting the social mores of the majority culture—patriarchal, Judeo-Christian, heteronormative, and middle class.
Spencer ended up taking home an Oscar later that month for Best Supporting Actress (Davis lost to Meryl Streep for Best Actress), but Smiley had articulated a discomfort many in the black community felt about their big-screen roles. For all its popularity and acclaim, The Help illustrates that Hollywood still filters (and distorts) the lives and histories of minorities through the eyes of the majority; celebrates white saviors; and, 72 years post-Mammy, is still more comfortable casting black women as maids than as prime ministers, action heroes, or romantic leads.
Where Smiley trod lightly, some people have been more explicit in their criticism of Davis and Spencer. In an open letter to Davis on the film-industry site Indiewire, black filmmaker Tanya Steele wrote, "Currently, the vanguard of black culture is still healing wounds from their past. Wounds that racism has created, wounds that drive you to gain acceptance in the larger culture. The acknowledgment comes in the form of a paycheck, exposure, star status, acceptance. An acceptance that is more important than our legacy. Isn't it that simple? How else could a black woman…take the role?"
Much-needed criticisms of The Help and the characters of Aibileen and Minny have come from sources like the Association of Black Women Historians, which, in its own open letter, challenged various aspects of the book and film, including misrepresentations of elements of black life and the lack of attention given to sexual harassment and civil rights activism. But there is something else floating in the ether: the idea that the role of a maid is simply too ignoble for a 21st-century black actress. That idea is merely respectability politics atwork.
I love to bleach my skin! Well that's how a lot of people feel lately. We live in a world where people discriminate you for all sorts of reasons, from the color of your skin to the color of your hair and if we all had the same color skin or hair we would probably be discriminated by the color of our eyes.
Some dark skin people resort to bleaching their skin to "look attractive" and become a browning,caring less about the health risks which include cancer. The amount of products available on the market are endless. The infamous cake soap (a clothes bleaching product), fair and white, topiclear and emami, just to name a few.
In Jamaica it has apparently become the norm to bleach your skin as one lady who was interviewed by the Jamaican Gleanor admitted that she buys bleaching cream for her 15-year-old son who attends high school. "Him did likkle bit too dark. Ah now him cute and the likkle schoolgrl them nuh stop rush him now that him a browning. Mi nuh see nutten wrong with it. Mi haffi tek care a mi pickney."
Now bleaching creams and bleaching tablets do work, just ask dancehall artiste Vybz Kartel, Soca Artiste Patrice Roberts and former baseball player Sammy Sosa. In an Interview, Vybz Kartel said that he sees bleaching your skin the same as relaxing your hair or getting a tan and he even has his own line of skin bleachers called 'VYBZ'.
The question remains, does bleaching your skin mean that you are ashamed of your color, have low self esteem, or is it as Kartel says, just like relaxing your hair. No big deal! Do black people lighten to enhance their beauty like makeup or plastic surgery? Were we brainwashed from slavery to believe that lighter skin is synonymous with beauty? Or is it that because its a trend mostly done by black people, society assumes that they do it because they dislike being black? We can even say that if skin lightening is said to imitate white culture, then tanning imitates black culture.
Evidence have shown that lighter skin people are sometimes considered before dark skin people, even when it comes to employment. Earlier this year, Aero Mexico, a Mexican Airline and its Ad agency, apologized for a producer's casting call requesting that only light skinned people apply as actors for a television commercial. The commercial has not yet been made, but the casting call specified it wanted "nobody dark skinned," only actors with "white skin". Hmmmmm.
Skin bleaching is not a new phenomenon, it has been taking place centuries ago. I was looking at some Ads from the 1940's and felt so ashamed and disgusted by them. I asked a friend of mine who is addicted to skin bleaching, about her views on the airline's Ad preference and she said "you see why I will never stop, I love bleaching my skin."
How Do we as Women view ourselves in the visual
Media?
Although throughout history women have been sexually objectified, now more than
before young girls are equating their worth
with their body image, and with the advent of the social media, and more
so visual media, not only are women being seen as objects , nowadays it is
often the image of a woman’s body that can be the driving force behind many
a decision that is made, its usually the
Alcohol label with the most scantly clad
ladies , the magazine with the beautiful woman on the cover, the movie with the
hot new actress that usually generate the most consumer interest.
“They have ads of how you should dress and what you should look
like and this and that, and then they say, 'but respect people for what they
choose to be like.' Okay, so which do we do first?"
Kelsey, 16, quoted in Girl Talk
From an early age our young girls are taught that they don’t
have to worry about their looks, that beauty is only skin deep, but more than
ever before young girls are being
bombarded with images, mainly from the media that tell them differently,
many young girls now want to look and dress
like reality TV stars, movie
stars and music icons many of whom offer little or no moral ethic, young girls s are particularly vulnerable
because they are impressionable which
makes them primary targets of advertisers. Most young girls fail to grasp that
they are being targeted and pressured
into accepting social concepts which may have no real truth to them but are being
incessantly pushed on them by the media.
In 2011, images of
10-year-old Thylane Loubry Blondeau appearing in FrenchVoguemagazine fuelled debate amongst child development
experts and government on what restrictions should be made relating to
sexualisation of children in the media.
A question arises, are we as women becoming
what the media made us, have we become so gullible that we are willing to accept
anything form of media content shoved at us with out firstly questioning the
motives of advertisers, many of them being women themselves, having a hand in
the way in which women are depicted in magazines, commercials, TV shows, movies,
music.
AS much as we try to avoid advertisements we can't, they are EVERYWHERE. Can you think about how many advertisements you are expose to a day? They're everywhere telling us to be thinner, have healthier hair, cook more, clean more, smell nicer and it seems as though it will never end. but c'mon, who doesn't like a good ole, funny, clever advertisement right? Here's just two of our favorites:
BUT then most times we have to sit through some HORRIBLE ones. One question though people,why do you need a woman in bathing suit acting all over sexual to advertise a BURGER or CAR OIL or a SOFT DRINK?? seriously?? Take a look at this video below:
This advertisement is blatantly sexually objectifying women. Sexual objectification is the act of treating a person merely as an instrument of sexual pleasure, making them a "Sex object". It contributes to rape culture, and it encourages people to see women as sexually available inactive objects, and not as individuals with their own feelings and thoughts
I KNOW for most of you men, you may not see anything wrong with this *rolls eyes*: BUT sexually objectifying images tells women that they are only wanted for the use of their body. Can you imagine a generation where women ACCEPTED that they are only useful for their bodies? That's scary.
Many of us have at least one female on our Facebook, Instagram, etc that just take out pictures of their boobs, butt, or in their underwear, some men go wild for these things, but have you stopped to think where they got the "this is normal" to do these things? They promote this culture that treats them like sex objects.
(pictures taken from Google)
As we always state, we're not saying that advertisements are totally responsible. Women obviously ought to have some level of understanding of what is acceptable and what is not. However, sometimes this behavior is acceptable to them because advertisements do have a great influence on the way sexual objectification is portrayed as "normal".
Quote from Irish Feminist’s Network (IFN):
Representative: “We’re surrounded by media images for such a large portion of our daily lives, it’s almost impossible to escape from it. We get the majority of our information today through media, be it music, tv, the internet, advertising or magazines, so it really is incredibly important for us as a society to think about the messages we receive from the media critically .On a personal level, I find the phrase ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’ to ring true for so many girls and women today. If you repeatedly see women presented as sexual objects and not as leaders in a variety of roles and careers, it can be difficult to aspire to leadership positions as a woman."
Advertisements on television, in newspapers, in magazines, is
something wrong with our hair and skin colour?
Ever wondered why in almost ALL the advertisements
both local and international or black people with natural
hair are never shown? I mean are you ashamed of us? Even when companies
make an attempt, they always use a light negro girl/ boy with natural hair or a brown skin girl with curly/straight
hair. If they happen to throw in a black person with natural hair they are never the focus.
Are these advertisements trying to tell us something? Being 'DARK' in Trinidad is already a challenge, I mean, can you remember going primary and secondary school and being provoked about having dark skin and "Bad
Hair", being told "AYE GAL YUH BLACK LIKE
PITCH" " AYE GAL WHEN CURRENT GONE LIKE YOU GONE TOO" or "GONE SO! WITH YUH NAPPY HEAD, HOW YUH GEH THAT COMB"? -____________- "Red" girls were cherish and respected because they were
lighter and just because of our colour and texture of our hair we won't. I mean
we're not here to "tote feelings" for the past but this is a very
serious issue. Even as adults you get comments like "SHE PRETTY FOR A
BLACK GIRL EH" *high pitch* WHAT?????
Kezia Campbell a group member told us about a discussion she had with a 5
year old Guyanese girl "Jenees" that was staying with her for a
while.
Kezia's Story:
While strolling through videos on YouTube an animated cartoon popped up next to
the video. It was a Blonde Caucasian fairy, Jenees turned and pointed to the
fairy
Jenees:"She pretty, I want her
hair".
Kezia: "Why you want her hair, you have nice hair
already"
Jenees: "*laughing*No
my hair HARD and i like her skin it nice and light"
Kezia: " *sat Jenees on her lap* your
hair is beautiful and your skin is smooth and dark and beautiful"
Jenees: " *under her breath*No
my skin like the devil, she skin like Jesus, i doh like my skin it dark and ugly"
Meet Jenees everyone and look at that smooth black
Kezia, stunned at her response sat for over an hour trying to convince a 5 year
old that she was beautiful.
Even if they do decide to throw in dark skinned person with natural African
hair its never often for example the Women's Dove campaign and Victoria Secret
Models.
Now, we're not saying that advertisements and mass media are totally to blame for the way that dark skin people negatively perceive their appearance or others but it undeniably contributes greatly.
+-+YouTube.png)
+-+YouTube2.png)
+-+YouTube.png)
.jpg)
