Food and sex are two of the most basic human needs, so utilizing both in advertisements is a logical decision on the part of ad companies, but it is largely detrimental to mental health, physical health and the attempt to create equality between the genders.
Women holding fat-filled burgers are wearing bikinis and showing no body fat, enticing people with their unattainability to partake in an unhealthy meal that makes their impossible bodies even more unobtainable. Girls are banging their heads against the wall wondering why they cannot look like the models that are made to look unreal and men are conditioned to see women as sexual objects, more a pedestal for a sandwich than a human that wants to eat a meal.
Audiences all over America tuned into the hit TV series Mad Men, often marveling at how blatantly women were referred to as second-class citizens in the '50s and '60s but failed to realize that such objectification has not gone out of fashion today. While Don Draper came up with images of women desiring to be thin and well-liked by men, the audience failed to realize that the magazines on their coffee table and commercial breaks held the same messages, a wolf in modern clothing.
How can a young girl hold her head high walking through the school cafeteria with a tray of food when she will sit down only to face her friends and these magazines with these slivers of women holding disgusting food and not gaining an ounce? What can she think about herself? How can young girls react to the natural ebb and flow of their weight when all they see are these stagnant women framed as perfection?
No pores, no out of place hair, no lumps or bumps, no crooked or off-color teeth. This distorted view of reality is enough to drive anyone insane. Your bathroom mirror becomes a fun house mirror, twisting your reality into something grotesque and laughable.
As an older sister, I can see this for what it is: baseless propaganda meant to force people like my little sister into buying things she doesn’t need to feel beautiful when she’s already stunning. However, as a woman I am not too proud to admit that I often feel compelled to do the same thing. I have stood in the aisles of a drugstore looking for things with which to alter myself for the good of others' perception of me instead of my perception of myself.
The American media consumer’s life is saturated with magazine, newspaper and commercial advertisements, all of which present women as subservient sexual objects holding sandwiches. By continuing the gendering of foods and the sexualization of women in ads the fight for equal rights between the genders is all for naught. Until it becomes commonplace for an average-sized woman to be shown fully-clothed and enjoying food in ads for said food, the feminist movement has a long way to go.