Printed slimming advertisements in Hong Kong

Printed slimming advertisements in Hong Kong Social institutions, such as family, education and mass media play an important role in the production and regulation of beliefs and practices of gender. Nowadays, advertising is a key institution of socialization in modern society and plays a crucial role in affecting public perception of women. When you walk on the street, slimming advertisements appear everywhere and there is no way to escape from receiving their messages. Undoubtedly, slimming has become a trend in Hong Kong. Moreover, those advertisements bombard us with ideal female images. Although it is widely believed that women have higher social status than the past and have more respect, there is a gap between the perceived female images in print media and real life. Thus, this paper argues that the printed slimming advertisements affect public perception of local women adversely since they often put emphasis on appearance and thinness, they objectify women by distorting the aesthetic standards of a human body and portray women as sex objects. Printed slimming advertisements may cultivate images of thinness. Fung (2006) estimates that there is around 30% of the pages of entertainment magazines advertisements directing at women. He further points out that those advertisements, especially slimming advertisements, have a great influence affecting the public perception on local women. Nowadays, printed slimming advertisements in magazines and on the billboards often suggest that one particular female image which conveys that an ideal body simply equals slim and not too small-breasted and taut, is socially valued. More importantly, those advertisements suggest the public that thin is in, fat is out (Lazier Kendrick, 1993, p. 209). Furthermore, printed slimming advertisements often attempt to create problems and fears that a fat body means more than something physical. According to those advertisements, a fat body tends to relate to some negative moral qualities. For example, a fat body is perceived as indicative of stupidity, laziness, sickness and self-indulgence. In addition, a fat body is the external sign of internal failure. On the contrary, those advertisements promote thinness as an image of grace, smartness, desirability and sex appeal. Those advertisements do not only tend to praise women with a slim body as fashionable and attractive, but also suggest that a thin body shows positive connotations of women. Thus, it is likely that printed slimming advertisements portraying local women should be thin and suggest that a fat body is not preferable. Along with thinness, appearance is often emphasized in printed advertisements. Almost all of the women in those printed advertisements are beautiful celebrities who are portrayed as professionals enjoying their lives, such as Cass Phang and Christy Chung of Marie France. For example, Fung (2006, p.175) points out that the advertisement of Marie France Bodyline by Christy Chung promotes the fashion of body contouring and gives the public an illusion of becoming a successful and professional woman through slimming. Therefore, printed slimming advertisements greatly affect public perception of local women adversely as they tend to acknowledge physical attractiveness and ignoring their inner beauty. Printed slimming advertisements tend to objectify women in order to distort the aesthetic standards of human body. Objectification means women are taught to internalize an observers perspective of their own bodies and more concerned with observable body attributes rather than focusing on non-observable body attributes such as feelings and internal bodily states (Kilbourne, 2002, as cited in Equal Opportunities Commission, p. 27). Therefore, the aesthetic standards of human body are likely to be distorted as women do not often treat their bodies as a whole by ignoring non-observable body attributes and putting their focus on body shape which should be similar with those figures in advertisements. As slimming companies aim at increasing the profit through those advertisement campaigns, a female body is commodified as a marketable product. According to Equal Opportunities Commission (2009), Greening suggests that advertising could be very powerful in shaping public perception toward wom en as selling objects and even tend to make the selling of womens body acceptable as it is one of the most powerful sources of education in society. Since the message on the printed slimming advertisements have great influence on women, such as those on the huge billboards outside shopping malls, a large number of women would like to compare themselves with the body shape and image on those advertisements. Moreover, they probably start to think that there is a need for them to conform to those beauty standards shown on the advertisements. They also view their faces as masks and their bodies as objects by denying the fact that everyones body should be unique and special. As a result, they are encouraged by those printed slimming advertisements to manipulate and change their faces and bodies through slimming. From the above, there may be a distortion of the aesthetic standards of the human body as women are likely to be portrayed as empty and decorative objects without individuality. Printed slimming advertisements may portray women as sex objects and women may portray as subordinate to men. It is widely believed that a large number of printed slimming advertisements display women with little clothes and even naked. Those advertisements often convey sexual information which defined by Harris (1994) as any representation that portrays or implies sexual interest, behaviour, or motivation (p.206), is often integrated within the advertisement as images, verbal element or both (Harris, 1994, as cited in Bohbot, 2003, p.13). For example, the printed advertisement of Fannie Yuen from Josephine Bust and Slimming Centre directs a readers gaze to her breasts. Thus, the printed slimming advertisements would affect public perception of local women as sex objects. The use of dismemberment in the printed slimming advertisements also makes women as sex objects. Dismemberment of women means it is the act of cutting, tearing, pulling, wrenching or otherwise removing, the limbs of a living thing (Equal Opportunities Commission, 2009, p.15). According to the Equal Opportunities Commission (2009, p.15), dismemberment of womens bodies is commonly seen in advertisements and highlight one part of a womans body, such as womans breasts and legs, while ignoring all other parts of her body, and portray women with missing appendages or substitute appendages. By using the technique of dismemberment, female bodies are collections of sexual features on display. By turning women into sex objects, womens role is distorted as women become weak and are subordinated by men. Subordinating women by men means that men always hold the power and authority and they treat women as their belonging as men assume that women are inferior. Models in printed slimming advertisements are passive and submissive, such as the printed advertisement of Sausontong showing the model lying on the floor with bikini. The passive and submissive poses suggest that women are for male sexual desire and s atisfy male gaze. According to Berger (2008), men are always spectators and women are always seen. The status of women is lowered by those advertisements as women are portrayed as sex objects. Thus, printed slimming advertisements may portray women as sex objects and women are portrayed as a subordination of men. It has been shown that public perception of women is affected by printed slimming advertisements negatively in Hong Kong. Those advertisements cherish the notion of thinness and appearance, dehumanize women as objects and even further devalue women as sex objects which subordinated by men. Therefore, I suggest that there should be guidelines and codes of conduct for advertising organizations. I hope that printed slimming advertisements in Hong Kong will portray women positively in the foreseeable future. References Berger, J. (2008)Ways of Seeing. Britian: Pengin Bohbot, M. (2003) What is Sex in Advertising. In Reichert, T. Lambiase, J. (Eds.), (p.13) Sex in advertising: perspectives on the erotic appeal. U.S.: Lawerence Erlbaum Associations Equal Opportunities Commission. (2009). Study of Public Perception of Female Portrayal of Female Gender in Hong Kong Media. Retrieved October 5, 2009, from http://www.eoc.org.hk/EOC/Upload/UserFiles/File/Report_Eng.pdf Fung, A. (2006). Gender and Adverting: The Promotional Culture of Whitening and Slimming. In Chan. K (Ed.), (p.175) Advertising and Hong Kong Society. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press Lazier, L. Kendrick, A. (1993). Women in Advertisements: Sizing Up the Images, Roles, and Functions. In P.J. Creedon (Ed.), (p.209) Women in Mass Communication. London NY : Sage.

Coursework Assessment Essay

In Patch Adams, Robin Williams portrays a doctor who strives to â€Å"improve the quality of life. â€Å"The movie is a perfect example of many cases of sacramental awareness and the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick. Patch encounters a â€Å"once-brilliant† man in a psychiatric clinic. Arthur Mendel son helps hunter the first character Patch meets is Arthur Mendel son. Arthur influences Patch’s ability to see through problems. In a Christ-like manner, we must see through and past the problems and look ahead toward the solution Christ died for our sins by looking past the problem. Patch also helps out his roommate, Rudy out. This brings on a revelation for Patch which lets him see through the scientific names of diseases. He learns to treat the person, not the disease. When he agrees to become a doctor, Patch is not only venturing into the field to physically heal people but also more importantly to spiritually heal people. This parallels Anointing of the Sick after meeting his two close friends, Truman and Cairn, Patch desires to reach out and help people, not to bury himself in his books. His friends quickly jump on the bandwagon and help him to carry out his theories. The sacramental awareness of Patch’s roommate is questionable until we find that he is genuinely good in the end. However, Dean Walcott is up until the end a foe of Patch’s. He is concerned with the physical aspect of healing much more than the spiritual aspect of healing. In the old church, Anointing of the Sick was sometimes believed to be physical. The spiritual aspect of healing would later be brought back into effect rightfully. When Patch is treating patients in his clinic, he exhibits great sacramental awareness by simply admitting that we are a community that can help each other. He proclaims that everyone is both a doctor and a patient. Patch also nears the meaning of the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick. He heals people in a beautiful way.

Hawthorne Studies Essay

Employees can be considered as an organization most valuable asset. Their development by the organizational administrative possibly is a definition for personnel management. The needs for concern about individuals in an organization had been long time overdue. The Hawthorne studies were a step forward. Such studies was about relations approach through a series of research methods, for instance illuminations and relay assembly test room experiments, interviewing problem and bank wiring observation. This essay will discuss to which extent Personnel management is a legacy of the Hawthorne Studies. An economic motivation such as incentives was irrelevant in the process of increasing productivity. From the study one can derived that workers’ achievement was solely based on the group decisions. They decided what the right amount of the day was. There are other influential factors that account for the increase of productivity. One can speculate that the workers had their own agenda, given that the impose conditions on them was inefficient. The continuity in the increase of productions could still be observed regardless of the situations. Group interactions through both formal and informal group existed throughout every organizations. The study implies that informal groups existed alongside formal groups. Such groupings develop their own rules and behavior as well as mechanizations to implement it. The employees were more receptive to their group firmness than to the control and inducements of the executives. The will of individuals to belong to an informal cluster with folks of identical attitude and background is much desirable. One can speculate that workers often sympathize with one another consequently they might have a change in their attitude due to group demands. The Hawthorne effect is significant when discussing the legacy of Hawthorne studies. This resulted in the workers to modify investigational aspects of their behavior. A simple reason is that they knew they were being observed. One can imply that the workers bound to display exemplary behavior that is anticipated from them. In view of the fact that they will never know if there will be serious penalty to follow due to result obtained. As one will adapt to the environmental norms and also follow it. Biasness in the interpretations of data is to be questioned. The investigator’s own principles might have influences the constructions of justifications. No more than the management perspective was deliberated. How individuals maximize output were the focal point of the studies, nevertheless the lines of reasoning were in support of the management (servants of power) as describe by Baritz(1965). This in turn gave room for the sensitive employees to be manipulated by judicious managers. Managers often governed by logistics of cost and efficiency as a result they created conditions for workers to produce more. Other believable explanations was omitted, thus errors from the results was imminent. Rose remarked† the Hawthorne studies, upon which so much human relations theory depended, were too incompetently executed to demonstrated very much at all† (Rose 1978 P.171). One can give credit to Rose as the sampling of workers was selective instead of a random sampling method. Furthermore troublesome personnel were replaced; this was because the researchers wanted to maintain the friendly atmosphere within the chosen group. The isolation of the group was an additional mistake. All of these features did not simulate the actual working environment. The experiment employment surrounding was a faà §ade. This resulted in the naivety on the researcher’s behalf, whereby unexpectedly they guided workers to produce an expected conclusion. To conclude one will argue that the Hawthorne Studies was a legacy of personnel management. It is due to the studies that individuals in organizations were taken seriously. Group regulation is one of the aspects that influence individuals’ decisions to maximize or minimize output. Economic motivation is not that indispensible. On the other hand one cannot perceive the studies as a legacy in personnel management for the reason that the Hawthorne effect was mostly influential. Inevitable biasness from researchers’ judgment as they were from a affluent background and traditionally they support the management as George Homans (1962, p.4) a Hawthorne studies researcher remarked As a Republican Bostonian who had not rejected his comparative wealthy family, I felt during the thirties that I was under attack, above all from the Marxists. Lastly the condition under which the studies were undertaken was not up to standards, but according to the naivety of the researchers.

Market Based Management Its Application Today Essay

Running head: MARKET-BASED MANAGEMENT Market Based Management: It’s Application in Business Today Lindsey Nelson Nova Southeastern University Market-Based Management: It’s Application in Business Today Introduction Past management styles or practices have been mostly authoritarian or managed from the top down. There was little regard or consideration for the input of labor, supervisors or middle management. Their opinions and experience was only asked for in times of crisis when their knowledge of a particular situation or project was needed to help upper management make a decision on a particular problem which usually dealt with a financial area that would be solved to best suit the company or benefit the company†¦show more content†¦22). Integrity is one of the core principles that is necessary for a company to succeed in business. Three company examples will be used to demonstrate the importance of integrity in doing business. In these three examples integrity, or the lack of it, caused two to become extinct and the third to grow and continue to be a healthy, growing company today, even in these challenging times. The first two businesses, which I will not name, are located in South Florida. Both of these companies were privately owned construction companies. I worked as a Project Manager for both of these companies. One of the companies was owned by a father, and the other company was owned by his son. These owners engaged in unethical business practices to achieve their goals of constructing projects by employing as many cost cutting methods as possible, even if these methods produced a substandard constructed building. Neither of these firms is in existence today. The third company is also a construction company and, as the first two companies, is also privately owned. I worked for this company in North Carolina for over ten years, also as a Project Manager. 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