Topic > The Influence of Rape Culture - 1407

They tell us what to wear, how to look, how to behave, and cultural beliefs and values. With power comes opportunity, which in this case is not being used to one's advantage when it comes to rape culture. Instead of creating advertisements that portray women as equal to men, they instead promote violence and sexual violence allowing such behaviors to be considered acceptable in society. Since advertisements are everywhere and difficult to escape, individuals are able to absorb a message from a particular advertisement. Advertising constantly sends subliminal messages to society, which are transferred into people's daily lives without even knowing where these thoughts come from. Because these ads promote sexual violence so subtly and casually, they normalize male sexual violence and therefore generally do not view certain ads as inappropriate or offensive to women. Recently, a popular department store in the United States, Bloomingdales, released a Christmas advertisement depicting a woman looking away while a man stares at her. Then there's the caption: "Steak your best friend's eggnog when he's not looking." This indicates that to sell their product they must also sell dates. By placing this idea in an advertisement, it reinforces the idea that rape is casual and part of the holiday season. It also normalizes the act which reinforces the idea that rape is normal and part of society. When Bud Light created the #upforanything campaign, they released a bottle that said, "the perfect beer to remove 'no' from your vocabulary for the night." This once again reinforces the idea that rape is okay because if the victim doesn't say "no" then it's not rape, when in reality it would be rape to consider that intoxicating someone to have sex with her is rape. Dolce and Gabbana have consistently created ads depicting rape to sell their product. One ad in particular promotes gang rape as it appears