Week 4 - "Sex, Lies, and Advertising" Summary

This article is written by Gloria Steinem, one of the co-founders of the magazine Ms. This magazine first appeared in 1972 and was written by women primarily for female readers. One of the hardest issues the magazine faced was actually finding companies that would be willing to advertise in the magazine. As the audience was primarily women, Steinem wanted ads that broke the tradition of sexualizing women and were actually geared towards women instead. Repeatedly, she and other staff members would present evidence that the magazine’s audience was primarily female and that women needed to buy commodities just as much as men. In this article, Steinem describes several of the struggles she went through to get appropriate advertisements and the rejections she faced.

Multiples times, the magazine staff attempted to appeal to car manufacturers, arguing that a car is a major investment and important purchase for a woman. Yet many American carmakers failed to understand, or didn’t even want to talk at all. They refused to believe that they needed different ads to appeal to women. The magazine did get support from foreign car companies, but American companies remained stubborn. Similar difficulties were met when trying to get electronics companies to advertise to women. A few companies would accept, but the majority still seemed to feel that women and technology simply did not go together.

One of the hardest areas to breach was the food industry. Ms. had decided that it did not want to include recipes, since that would breach into the editorial content which they wanted to keep under their control. Most big food companies, however, wanted advertisements of their products to be accompanied by recipes, preferably ones that featured the product being advertised. Ms. staff tried to explain that, to women, a recipe symbolizes work, which will work against the ad itself. Except for the occasional ad, this methodology kept almost all food companies away from the magazine. Alcohol producers were similarly reluctant to advertise in the magazine, since alcohol ads were almost exclusively meant for men. It took eight years before any beer company placed an ad in the Ms. magazine.

This article describes similar struggles when facing other markets. The magazine staff tried to get Lionel to advertise toy trains to girls and airline industries to cater to women, among others. Due to such difficulties, Ms. has faced financial problems throughout its existence. Even so, it has gotten very good responses from its consumers and has made a large impact on our culture.