Open up a magazine or flip on the television, and odds are you'll come across an ad that brands its product as "empowering," particularly for women. Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty displays women of all races, shapes and sizes showing off their natural, Dove-smooth bodies. Verizon Wireless's "Rule the Air" campaign touts that air, the particular medium of its service, "has no prejudice" against women. Even Victoria Secret's Very Sexy campaign markets female sexuality as a source of girl power.
But is Verizon's promise to provide female customers with the same cell phone reception they offer males really "empowering," and if not, why are so many brands latching on to a similar concept?
Professor Nancy Bauer, chair of the Department of Philosophy and expert in feminist philosophy, explained that the concept of empowerment is one that that has become culturally trendy.
"Even if people don't talk about it, I think it is in the air, culturally," she said.
But feminine empowerment, Bauer said, does not necessarily manifest in the disappearance of conventional female objectification or sexualization in advertising — if these ads demonstrate anything, it is that female sexuality can actually be harnessed to communicate empowerment, she said. According to Bauer, Lady Gaga is the prime example of a public figure that embodies both.
"She dresses in these outrageous ways and is invested in the idea of presenting herself as totally different from anybody else and completely her own person, yet at the same time, she is still conventionally sexualized," she said.
Bauer explained that even though Lady Gaga wears provocative clothing and high platforms and shows a lot of skin, she still has a conventionally attractive body.
"She sends the message that part of what empowerment is, is exactly what the culture is showing," Bauer said. "Feminine sexuality is a kind of power that can be wielded, provided that you are genuinely accepted in a feminine way."
Sophomore Kelsea Carlson, a prospective women's studies major, said that themes relating to female pride, now more than ever, pervade the advertisements she sees on television.
"One of the main examples that comes to mind is the Gillette Venus razor ads that generally display women getting ready to go out but rarely, if ever, show men," she said. "This shows that a woman feeling sexy and confident comes from within herself, rather than [from] the gratification of a man," Carlson said.
Junior Eva Sikes thinks that Dove's campaign, in particular, successfully capitalizes on appealing images of self-esteem.
"They use rhetoric about healthy body image … to capture women's interests, which seems to undermine the mainstream pressures women feel to look a certain way or behave a certain way," she said.
Yet the question remains whether these commercials actually promote female empowerment and self-esteem or simply capitalize on the appeal of those ideas, Sikes said. The same ad company that runs the Dove campaign, Unilever, is responsible for Axe commercials, which feature female bodies as hyper-sexualized props for male consumers' enjoyment, she pointed out.
"They're selling self-esteem there, too, for the average American young male, but the ways in which self-esteem is defined for men versus women is really different," she said.
Modhumita Roy, a faculty member of the English Department and the director of the women's studies program, agreed. Ultimately, she said, female empowerment in advertisements is just another cheap method to appeal to potential buyers.
"We need to look at the bigger picture and see whether advertisers put these images in our vision for empowerment and equality or just use them to sell more things," Roy said. "That's a tricky business. Usually, it's because empowerment sells. They've realized there's a particular constituency that wants to see this empowerment in the mix. And I'm not certain this is out of any kind of political commitments. I feel a little uncomfortable equating buying things to our empowerment. It reminds me a little bit of Bush asking us to go shopping after 9/11."
But, as Roy expected, empowerment is marketable, and according to a recent New York Times report, more and more advertising agencies are tapping into this knowledge and filling their ads with a sense of female pride.
Bauer pointed out that while many advertisements create the illusion of promoting female empowerment and pride, they sometimes simultaneously undermine those very values. While Dove's campaign claims to support self-esteem for women of all body types, she said, it does not exactly stand by the message it sells.
"The fact of the matter is that virtually everybody they show is still nowhere near as imperfect as some female bodies in reality are," she said.
Assistant Professor of Sociology Sarah Sobieraj, who teaches Media and Society, emphasized that even those advertisements that do manage to portray female empowerment effectively are not necessarily feminist.
"These ads don't strike me as particularly feminist," she said. "Gender inequality creates real, very powerful challenges for women in the United States and globally — poverty, violence, discrimination — none of which are solved by choosing one running shoe over another, and at some level it's anti-feminist. Selling girl power wrapped in acne medicine and cellulite cream is eye-roll worthy."
Bauer agreed, explaining that many ads empower potential customers only superficially — for a long enough time to attract buyers, but not enough to have any long-lasting or significant effects on viewers.
"What can feel to somebody at one moment as pride can very quickly dissolve and evolve into a feeling of simply being an object of a culture," Bauer said. "A lot of times, the gambit that women take to present themselves as feminine and to sexualize themselves in a feminine way doesn't produce the kinds of results that all the ads promise they'll produce. And even when they do, it's much more complicated than merely being empowered. The real world is much more complicated."
Both Sobieraj and Carlson agreed, explaining that marketers and advertisers have one goal in mind: to sell products.
"What the ads really offer women is what advertising today offers all of us — urgent prompting to express our unique and irrepressible individuality through the consumption of mass-produced and -marketed consumer goods," Sobieraj said.
Advertisers are more astute than kind or caring, Carlson said.
"It is not necessarily the ads that are trying to promote equality, but rather they know that more and more women are feeling empowered, and showing empowered women is more likely to sell a product," she said.
Romy Oltuski contributed reporting to this article.
