ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Distancing Through Objectification? Depictions of Women’s
Bodies in Menstrual Product Advertisements
Mindy J. Erchull
Published online: 21 May 2011
#
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011
Abstract Terror Management Theory has led to suggestions
that humans may distance themselves from menstruation in
order to avoid reminders of their own corporeality and
mortality, and the objectification of women has received
empirical support as one means to do so. A content analysis of
240 menstrual product advertisements published in Seventeen
and Cosmopolitan over 12 years was undertaken to look for
evidence of objectification. Idealized images of women were
common, lending support to the idea that these tactics can be
used to provide distance from reminders of our own
mortality, but overtly sexualized images were less common.
The fact that nearly half of the advertisements did not
include images of women may provide even stronger support
for this idea. This indicated that a sanitized female body is
not just being paired with reminders of menstruation, we are,
literally, removing the female body entirely in many
instances.
Keywords Advertising
.
Menstrual products
.
Content
analysis
.
Objectification
.
Sexualization
.
Menstruation
.
Terror Management Theory
.
Mortality salience
.
Creatureliness
Introduction
Women’s bodies are often treated as objects of beauty to be
admired; at the same time, women’s bodies are also often
reviled with respect to their more functional natures (e.g.,
menstruation, gestation, and lactation; Roberts and Waters
2004). Terror Management Theory suggests that this duality
may represent two ways of distancing ourselves from
reminders of our own corporeality and mortality (Goldenberg
et al. 2000; Greenberg et al. 1997). A content analysis of
advertisements for menstrual products published in American
magazines was undertaken. This study replicated findings
from earlier research on menstrual product advertisements in
regards to the prevalence of idealized images of women and
the use of sexualized body language. This study also extended
this work by contextualizing the way women are portrayed in
advertisements in terms of means of distancing oneself from
or escaping from reminders of one’s own corporeality.
Many view women’s bodies as objects of beauty, and
women’s bodies are often objectified by being made a target
for the gaze from others (Fredrickson and Roberts 1997). At
the same time these bodies are eliciting admiration, the
functions of these bodies are often eliciting disgust. For
example, there are many cultural taboos surrounding
menstruation (Delaney et al. 1988)andmuchshame
associated with menstruation (Roberts 2004;Schooleretal.
2005), particularly the potential discovery by others that one
is menstruating (Merskin 1999; Simes and Berg 2001).
Many also report discomfort with public breastfeeding since
breasts are typically seen as sexual objects rather than the
functional objects they are designed to be (Johnston-Robledo
et al. 2007b;Ussher1989). Terror Management Theory
offers an explanation for this dualistic treatment of women’s
bodies. This theory addresses humans’ existential fears about
death and the cultural belief systems we create in order
to manage our fears about this inevitable aspect of life
(Goldenberg et al. 2000
). When we are reminded of our
own mortality, we are more likely to cling to these cultural
belief systems we have created to give order and meaning to
our lives. For example, when mortality was made salient for
M. J. Erchull (*)
Department of Psychology, University of Mary Washington,
1301 College Avenue,
Fredericksburg, VA 22401–5300, USA
e-mail: merchull@umw.edu
Sex Roles (2013) 68:32–40
DOI 10.1007/s11199-011-0004-7
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