Summary of Supersexualize Me! Advertising and the 'Midriffs' by Rosalind Gill

          It’s hard to believe Rosalind Gill’s data that the average U.S. citizen sees and/or hears 3000 advertisements per day, which per Kilbourne’s study, extrapolated to three years of interaction with advertising in one’s lifetime.  What was not so surprising, however, was that advertising has been shown to have a comparable influence to education and religion, and that graphic violence and hyper sexualized imagery are two prominent methods for advertisers.
          The advertising of the 1960-1980s showed predominately subservient images of women – housewives, dumb blondes, and passive sex objects – who relied on knowledgeable men.  This reinforced Gill’s statement that advertisers rely on “crude, easily-recognizable stereotypes” (279) to command the fleeting bits of consumers’ attention, which in turn demonstrated men’s domination of women – the roots of objectification and thereby the initial phase of justifying violence against women.  Beginning in the mid-1990s, advertising modified its portrayal of women.  The sexually empowered female replaced the earlier portrayal of women as passive sex objects. 
          While the midriff literally refers to a woman’s abdominal area, the recent term ‘midriff’ advertising, which targets women in the 20-30age range, connoted a shifting focus on body, autonomy, empowerment, and sexualized representations.  Whereby supporting a woman’s household role was core to 1950s product advertising, ‘midriff’ advertising centers on selling products to create flawless beauty, and by doing so, altered women’s evaluation of self-worth from capability to beauty.

          Midriff advertising also demonstrated that women can use their sexual power for their own purposes – to vie for and attract men’s attention at their whim – not at men’s beckon-and call.  In short, women are in charge of their appearance, can use their sex appeal as they see fit, and by doing so, shift the balance of power by gaining control over men using their sexuality.  Rather than seeing herself as needing to please a man, the woman shown in midriff advertising ‘pleases herself’ – a double entendre for personal freedom and sexual liberty.  The midriff ads empowered women through use of products that allowed her to dominate men using her sexuality.
          While midriff ads focused on the playful, empowered woman who consumed the advertised products to please herself and dominate men, this advertising excluded unattractive women (old, disabled, ugly) and everyone other than the targeted heterosexual individuals.  Another downside is that midriff advertising euphemized painful beauty practices (e.g., genital waxing), ignored the exposure to violence associated with midriff’s actions, and commodified beauty as a ‘cookie cutter’ rather than an individualized style.
          The author points to this irony:  while midriff advertising appears to put women in control of what is important to them, they continue to be portrayed with sexuality and beauty as their focal points.  Further, Gill reflected on Douglass Rushkoff’s documentary The Merchants of Cool and agreed that midriff is nothing more than a glamorous, new wrapping on the old maligned, sexist techniques used to advertise products to women in the past.  In conclusion, Gill called for feminists to reject and resist midriff advertising in favor of broader gender spectrum in the advertising medium.