Today, I will explore the global issue of how women are commodified and how it diminishes females' sense of identity, agency, and self-worth, further reinforcing unrealistic societal expectations. Through Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale and Jean Kilbourne’s documentary Killing Us Softly, we see the global issue of how women are systematically reduced to objects for use or consumption. While Atwood considers a totalitarian regime where commodification is overt and institutionalised, Kilbourne reveals how the same process occurs subtly in advertising. Together, these texts expose the ongoing threat of objectification in both fictional and real-world contexts.
Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale presents a chilling vision of the Republic of Gilead, a theocratic regime in which women’s value is tied solely to their ability to bear children. In this world, female identity is dismantled and reconstructed to serve patriarchal goals. A striking example appears when Offred reflects, "We are two-legged wombs, that’s all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices." Atwood’s use of metaphor here is crucial. The phrase "sacred vessels" might initially sound reverent, but it is laden with irony. Reverence is conditional, women are valued only insofar as they can serve reproductive ends. This links back to the global issue of how women are reduced to objects, where their individuality is erased, their personhood hollowed out, leaving them as symbolic containers of state-sanctioned fertility.
Colour symbolism further reinforces Gilead’s hierarchy and accentuates the global issue of women being reduced to objects. Handmaids are dressed in red, a colour associated with both fertility and shame. The Wives, meanwhile, wear blue, invoking Marian purity and spiritual superiority. These colours are not mere visuals, they are visual ideologies. They encode each woman’s social function, turning clothing into a form of social branding. This coding creates visible boundaries and exacerbates divisions among women, preventing solidarity and reinforcing the regime’s control.
Language in Gilead is another tool of commodification. The name Offred is not a name at all but a marker of possession, she is "of Fred," belonging to her Commander. Atwood critiques the erasure of identity through linguistic appropriation, drawing a parallel with real-world practices: enslaved people forced to abandon names, or women changing surnames upon marriage. This highlights the global issue, whereby stripping women of names and assigning them identifiers of ownership, the regime annihilates individual agency.
Atwood’s dystopia draws heavily from historical and political realities. She weaves in references to Puritanism’s rigid gender norms, the backlash against second-wave feminism in the 1980s, and theocratic practices around the world. Atwood’s use of speculative fiction enables her to amplify these real-world tendencies to expose their logical extreme. Her warning is not that such a regime could exist, it’s that its building blocks already do. The global issue of female commodification, when left unchecked, becomes a system that consumes identity and enforces compliance.
Atwood also draws attention to how institutions rebrand subjugation as virtue. The Commanders justify women’s roles as "natural" and "god-given," reframing oppression as divine order. This aligns with real-world political rhetoric that uses religion or tradition to justify inequality. Atwood’s careful use of ironic language, blessing ceremonies, sacred roles, forces the reader to question the manipulation of moral language to mask exploitation. Thus, this highlights the global issue, where it is not just individuals but whole belief systems that become tools for commodifying women.
Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly brings the conversation into our world, showing how the commodification of women is embedded in advertising. Through a critical media literacy lens, Kilbourne examines how ads fragment and objectify women’s bodies. In one segment, she notes, "Women’s bodies are dismembered in ads, legs, lips, breasts, always separated from the whole." This literal fragmentation is more than a visual strategy, it is a cultural statement. It teaches viewers to fully see the global issue, where women are not seen as full people but as a set of desirable, purchasable parts.
This objectification is compounded by passive and submissive portrayals. Women are often shown lying down, looking away, or infantilised, while men are upright, direct, and assertive. Kilbourne shows how such visual pairings reinforce dominant gender roles: women appear, men act. These roles aren’t just reflected in media, they are inscribed into the cultural subconscious. When girls and women internalize these portrayals, their sense of agency diminishes. Kilbourne’s critique is not limited to how women are seen but how women learn to see themselves.
Kilbourne also highlights how commercial advertising blurs the line between fantasy and expectation. For instance, ads frequently depict women as hyper-sexualised but silent, beautiful but voiceless. These contradictions train viewers to link female value with physical perfection and compliance. As women internalize these ideals, they begin to self-monitor, editing themselves to fit impossible standards. The result is not just self-objectification but a diminished sense of self, which further reinforces the global issue.
The consequences are measurable. Kilbourne supports her argument with research linking objectification in media to a range of psychological and social issues. These include body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and increased tolerance of gender-based violence. She argues that advertising is not a passive mirror but a powerful educator, shaping desires, behaviors, and expectations. Its repeated imagery makes the extraordinary seem ordinary and the global issue appear acceptable.
Kilbourne’s observation that “Girls are taught to think that they should be effortlessly beautiful, and that any flaw, any sign of aging, any weight gain is a personal failure” reflects a cultural expectation that links female appearance with moral value. While this critique originally targeted traditional advertising, its contemporary relevance has only intensified in the age of social media. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok have blurred the line between consumer and commodity, encouraging women to curate and market their own image in exchange for likes, attention, or influence. This creates a cycle where women internalise commercial ideals and voluntarily perform their own commodification. Kilbourne’s language, particularly the phrase “personal failure”, exposes how societal beauty standards are no longer just externally imposed, but also self-policed. Her insight proves especially present in today’s influencer culture, where personal identity is filtered, branded, and sold, further highlighting the global issue of female commodification and objectification, as well as reinforcing unrealistic expectations. In this way, the commodification of women has evolved, but not disappeared, media platforms have simply made it more pervasive and insidious.
Both Atwood and Kilbourne reveal the global issue of how commodifying women diminishes identity, agency, and self-worth. In Gilead, this reduction is overt and violently enforced, in consumer culture, it is insidious and normalised. Yet both systems ultimately do the same thing: they train people to see women not as autonomous individuals, but as tools or products.
This global issue remains critically relevant today. Debates over reproductive rights, the influence of social media, and movements like #MeToo all centre on the question of who controls women’s bodies and identities. These texts challenge readers not only to recognise the mechanisms of commodification but to resist them through language, media literacy, and empathy. The fight for identity and dignity is not fiction. It is unfolding around us now.
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