Carls Jr. Ads: Objectifying Women to Sell Burgers

The Advertisements we see these days dehumanize women such as using their body to sell burger from Carls Jr. Never have I thought a burger can be sexy, but the Carls Jr ads proves me wrong. I guess all you need is a woman taking a huge chunk off a burger, and having ketchup falling onto her breast. They sure know how to sell an average tasting burger. What the companies are doing though are showing that women are concerned more of an object than an actual human being. They're saying women are more of an object of pleasure than being an actual person.

As I'm flipping through the channels looking for a good show to watch I come across this commercial. It’s an advertisement for this new burger Carls Jr. is promoting. It has model Kate Upton eating a burger in slow motion with her body getting all sweaty, and also starts to undress. “The southwest patty melt with pepper jack cheese and jalapeños. Classic just got a whole lot hotter.” The funny thing is that the commercial got me more focused on Kate Upton than the actual burger. I forgot that they were trying to advertise the food. Commercials that Carls Jr. advertise are very manipulating. They have these girls eating their food in a sexual fashion using their body to sell the product. Carls Jr uses it as a comparison towards sex, and basically stating thats all girls are used for. Those models don't even go to Carls Jr. or even any fast food places. Think about it, a model that has to constantly work out and eat healthy would not considered eating a ginormous burger. That kind of food is unhealthy for them, and in some commercials you can see them not take an actual bite. The audience Carls Jr. try to attract are mainly men. Eating burgers and having sexy models eat their food is a manly appeal. Men usually think about two things, sex and food. Some of the commercials would even have some quotes like “Eat like a real man”. That ads basically says only “real men” go to Carls Jr, and eat their burgers. Even now some commercials have men eating their burgers and try to get a transition to a female audience. There was a commercial that the movie X-Men: Days of Future Past had with Carls Jr. and I found it very confusing. It was a X-Men member that is a woman and began to eat their burger but then in big letters it says “Man Up”. They are discriminating against woman in some sort of way. They're saying the burger is too big so you need to become a man to tackle such a humongous burger. What I don't get is that X-Men is known for not discriminating over how you look. Whether you're a man, woman, blue, yellow, or any color you're accepted by them. No matter if it’s a woman or a man promoting the food, Carls Jr. only use good looking people too. They make it seem that if a good looking person like that eats a burger then I can eat one too. “Hey want to join the mile high club?” Believe it or not that is how one Carls Jr. commercial starts off. Straight to the point using a sex appeal in their commercials. They eat this burger that over topped with bacon and extra thick. Basically saying eating this burger is like having sex.

Advertisements that recently catches my attention are the ones that you see on magazines or commercials with models showing off their beautiful features. They have all kinds of different types of models showing off their all natural gifts but in reality they look nothing like in the pictures or commercials you see. So much of a woman's body is photoshopped to make them slimmer, reduce blemishes, or editing their facial features to make them look prettier. They have the models covered in tons of make up too so its like they're a whole new person. The advertisements can manipulate woman that feel unconfident about them selves because they don't look that pretty. There are so much photoshop effects that go behind the pictures to make the “perfect model” even more perfect. That goes to show that not even the most good looking girls are not good enough to be on a cover of a magazine. The advertisement companies are basically lying to all of the woman that are concerned on the way they look and wanting to change their body shape when in reality those models they look up to look nothing like that with all the photoshop done.

In the article “Photoshop Redefining Beauty In Cosmetic Advertisements, Giving False Advertising A Run For the Money”, the author Ashley Brown states that photoshopping programs are a huge part in beauty ads now and how false the pictures have become now. With that much editing on a women to make them look even more beautiful is identified as being considered as false advertisement. This article is helpful because of the ways and how much time they put into photoshop to get make the picture even more beauty or fake. They manipulate women by making them think they are not beautiful because they don't look like those models.

“Photoshop has the power to manipulate an image’s appearance beyond recognition, making it possible to transform an average looking individual into a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world. Photoshop has become so common within the fashion and advertising industry that most have come to approach it with overwhelming indifference, accepting its presence in all images as a fact of life”. The effects from photoshop are ridiculous. They alter the look from a female and make them a whole new person.

In the article “A Feminine Double-Bind? Towards understanding the commercialization of beauty through examining anti-aging culture” the author Benbow Buitenhuis speaks on women using products to make them feel like they have no flaws in their face or body but in reality trying to become that perfect women is impossible and does not exist. Benbow states “Technological media advances also sees consumers confronted by impossible beauty standards, which further problematizes aging in a globalized universal culture”(Benbow). There is an issue with women wanting to look beautiful and that is them not wanting to age and look old high is apart of life. They are trying to take away that factor of becoming older and wanting to be young forever. According to Benbow, she states “In recent studies there has been a steady climb in consumption of cosmetic goods over the past 10 years”(Benbow). More and more women are becoming insecure with the way they look. Computers and photoshop programs are getting updated more and have more techniques to edit body features. The technology is advancing, and makes it more believable on how these models look like with all the photo editing being done. She goes and gives reasons on why some women wear beauty cosmetics such as, “The beauty consumable, such as makeup or skincare goods, came to be seen as a means of assistance for women to reach the ideal of New Womanhood and also, as a way for working class women to transcend long-held ideas about class and race”(BenbowP3). With all the make up women use it makes them feel good about themselves and they feel the need to use it because they see other women looking pretty with it they want to be just like that model they see in the magazine or how the new womanhood is now. They feel that they don't fit in and they have to look a certain way or they wont be considered like equal to other women.

Women are just making that issue worse though in opinion. Society has all these commercials dehumanizing women just using their body features to sell a product. Stating that women are more as an object of pleasure than being a person. They have all these beauty products too and they give in to them. Most women are fascinated with the way they look. It may be because they want to look pretty and it makes them feel good inside or it just may be they idolize these “perfect models” because they really look like how they are in a magazine. Social media takes apart of the way women feel about their body shapes too. They see all these models posting selfies on Instagram with full body pictures, showing off their ridiculous waist size and skinny body shape. In the article “Thinspiratation” the author Natalie Hollingshead reflects on her issue about how she didn't feel thin enough, and the way she felt sadden when looking upon models Instagram pages. She claims “I'm sitting here, three years into recovery, trying to finally accept my body and I scroll through Instagram where there are dozens of the same, perfect size zero girl. I feel like I'm the only girl on my feed without a dang thigh gap. Or #goals relationship. It can be difficult to feel happy with myself”(HollingsheadP1). Girls see these models and how pretty their look and want to become just like them. Whatever it takes to make them have that perfect size whether its not eating and have eating disorders which seems to increase each year. According to Hollingshead she states “Emily Dugan of Child Line, a 24-hour counseling service for recovering anorexics, said that the number of children and teenagers who seek help for an eating disorder has increased by 110 percent in the past three years”(HollingsheadP5). Social media has to be taking a huge part on girls becoming anorexic, because of the kind of peer pressure they get off it. They don't fit in with society so they take drastic measures to become one of those models.

Advertisements are all over the world and we see them everyday. They can be misleading such as the beauty ads showing how models look, but in real life they have blemishes on their face and have many photoshopping done to make them look better. Advertisements might show off their product by showing a women body feature, and basically saying that women are just an object more than a human. The issues with advertisements dehumanizing women keeps continuing, and makes women feel insecure about themselves so they reach out to make harsh measure to their body.