Images of women in mass media have been under scrutiny in recent decades. At one end of the continuum is print advertisement, brief, often single-paged combinations of text and imagery to sell a product. At the other end is pornography, sexually explicit imagery created to arouse in print, television, film, and the Internet. Where does power fit in between these? Women in both these forms of mass media are repeatedly depicted in submissive, silenced, and even victimized roles. Advertising is a much more benign means of conveying power over women than pornography. However, the average American is exposed too much more gendered advertising than pornography in any given day. In both, women are not often autonomous beings but passive and objectified.

The power of imagery is well known. As visual imagery is nonverbal, its messages are often multilayered and contradictory (Kang 1997). As a socializing agent, the visual imagery provided by the media can have a powerful impact on our attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors, since it can contribute meanings and associations entirely apart and of much greater significance (ibid). Advertisements are everywhere, from television, in print, on billboards, and so on. Yet decoding each one we see is near impossible due to the number of ads we encounter every day.

Feminists have been concerned with the media