In the following picture, an article on helping children value thier inner beauty is accompanied by a link to another article called "How to get Victoria Beckham's Legs" at the top and centre of the page.
Girls' self-esteem will not be helped by tips on how to get the best-looking legs possible. Also, I think that we should move away from the term "inner beauty" and use an entirely different word. The concept of inner beauty as being something that we should strive to achieve suggests that the word "beauty" is important, and I don't think that we can ever move beyond dominant conceptions of beauty while using this word.
Similarly, this is one of my favourite feminist blogs, called feministing, but it has ads on the top of it; this particular ad being for eliminating belly fat.
I am guessing that they don't get to choose who advertises on this space. I am also quite sure that the writer of the article about girls' self-esteem did not pick the articles that are linked on that page. But it annoys me that this content can be so difficult to avoid, even when reading articles or blogs that are considered to be feminist and are actually trying to fight against these problems.
You should see the ads over at freethoughtblogs. Churches and Christian paraphernalia, books about why the Bible is right... it's hilarious sometimes.
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons I don't "monetize" my blog (though it would be nice to get some sort of money to help with life from the hours spent blogging) is that you have no control over what ads your site hosts. The advertisements are keyed to words and phrases from your posts... so if you use the word "woman" a lot in one post, for instance, imagine what sort of ads you can get in this patriarchal society? And yet I understand why sites like feministing monetize... they have a lot of writers and they want to give them something for what they do. Bloody capitalism control of the interwebs!
ReplyDeleteYou would think they'd come up with a better system for that...
ReplyDeleteI've had a few emails offering to pay me for ad space on my blog, but I refuse because I am afraid of it looking like feministing's ads. I don't think I could blame a site for allowing ads, considering many of the best ones are made by starving students, but it sucks.