This is an advertisement for Duncan Quinn which is a menswear company which specialises in British tailoring and could be said to only used and produce the ‘best’. In the image there is a man dressed in a tailored suit with an amused look on his face on the right of the image. On the left of the image there is a slim woman who is in white lingerie lying on a car with what looks to be a leash around her neck. The woman looks subservient as well as unconscious due to her body looking limp and unresponsive which raises some red flags.

One ethical standard within advertising is to not mislead the consumer. In this image Duncan Quinn has objectified the woman into a submissive sex slave which doesn’t correspond to British menswear tailoring which misleads the consumer into not actually understanding the true point of the advert which was to promote Duncan Quinn as a menswear brand rather than sexual domination of men. In Gender and the media by R.Gill stated “turning a human being into a thing, an object, is almost always the first step towards justifying violence against that person” (Kilbourn 1999). This could be linked to the ‘victim blaming’ which is when something bad happens to a person but they, the victim, are blamed. This advert makes women seem more like sexual objects rather human beings and if something or someone is an object they will not be treated as another human being, creating one theory for why there is violence against women.

In advertising they are meant to mirror and reflect that society and if Duncan Quinn’s advert is meant to reflect society what does it say to the rest of the world about Britain and its men? That they’re dominant? Consumed with luxury and ego? That they care about themselves more than others? If so, this is quite evident by the way the man is treating the woman in the picture if you was to say that this image is a reflection of its society. This image is tailored towards the male gaze as it is directed at the ‘heterosexual man’ and the characteristics associated with the title. The woman is portrayed and treated as a sexual object in this picture which could also say that western societies do not view women as equals to men but rather sexual beings that satisfy men’s needs as this “woman’ is ‘depicted as ‘decorative object’” (R.Gill 2006) rather than a smart, intelligent, career bound with either a job or as a mother.

Overall, the image creates a false representation of western societies which violates ethics surrounding morals and misleading. The image can be considered offensive towards women as it portrays them as inferior and subservient to men and they are the ones in control because they are ‘holding the leash’. This is unethical because it incorrectly suggests that Duncan Quinn is about something other than British menswear tailoring.

Bibliography

Gill,Rosalind (2006) Gender in the media, Cambridge; Polity Press

Slideshare (2010) Available from https://www.slideshare.net/f098/ethical-issues-in-advertising [Accessed 25th November 2017]