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The Phenomenon of the Infantilization of Women

The sexualization of women in advertisements remains a controversial form of media, specifically infantilization. Infantilization is defined as the portrayal of adult women acting and looking childish through attire and demeanor. This study examines consumers’ perceptions of infantilized women in advertisements. Students (n = 100) from a 4-year university participated in an online questionnaire examining measures of morality, objectionability, and ubiquity of five advertisements. Three out of the five advertisements display infantilized female models. The others show women in a non-infantilizing manner. A single chi-square conducted on the participants found significant differences in if students can correctly identify in ads. Additionally, a series of analyses of variance (ANOVA) also found significant differences between males and females in their perception of the infantilization of women in advertisements. Overall, the results indicated that participants incorrectly identified infantilization, and males rated it lower in morality and higher in objectionability than females. These findings support the need for a more critical analysis of the infantilization of women.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:honorstheses-2436
Date01 January 2023
CreatorsRechdan, Caitlin R
PublisherSTARS
Source SetsUniversity of Central Florida
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceHonors Undergraduate Theses

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