While researching for this project, I came across a particularly disturbing piece of media that I would like to share in hopes that you find it just as ridiculous as I did. The advertisement above is from a highly controversial “Ashley Madison” online website. This website promotes marital affairs by providing users with a means to interact with others online in a way the site claims to be private. The platform has put up many advertisements across multiple media sources such as YouTube, ads on public TV, and full-blown business ads since the site’s creation. These advertisements often are very objectifying towards women and likely invoke shame in both men and women and heterosexual couples, as well as individuals in non-straight couples. In this blog post, I will analyze how this website and these advertisements are harmful to the full spectrum of genders, sexual orientations, and races.

Ashley Madison was launched in 2002. And was marketed towards individuals who were married. The media above is one of the most widely used advertisements that Ashley Madison uses. The slogan above reads, “Life is short. Have an affair.” Additionally, the image of the woman to the right is wearing a wedding band while holding her finger to her lips, which suggests that the site is secretive and users won’t be caught by their spouses. The woman to the right is also thin, with unnaturally red lips, which promotes unnatural and unattainable beauty standards.

Unsurprisingly, the site has seen its fair share of controversy. The most notable of these controversies happened in 2015 when hackers breached the website’s security and published the users’ names, messages, and credit card information. The data breach also revealed that the site exaggerated the number of users by using fake bots to replace real women. 

Now that I have briefly discussed the history and some issues with this platform, I want to return to the piece of media I showed at the top of this blog. In this advertisement, two women are pictured. The woman on the top is skinny with a green checked box to the left of her, while the woman on the bottom is much larger with a red X in the box next to her. The two women are wearing almost the same outfit, and aside from their difference in weight, they have similar features. 

I’m honestly shocked at how effectively this advertisement oppresses almost every single group of people. Starting with the most obvious, the advertisement is clearly trying to express that obese women are less attractive than unrealistically thin women. This message is extremely harmful to people considered to be obese, and since the advertisement was made public, it is a certainty that obese individuals saw this ad. Additionally, both of the women in the advertisement are white. In addition to this, the name “Ashey Madison” is a caucasian name, which, again, promotes unrealistic beauty standards by suggesting that caucasian women are the epitome of beauty. Another way in which this media is harmful is towards non-heterosexual people. While the advertisement doesn’t explicitly state that the women included in it are straight, the website seems to primarily advertise itself towards straight couples in search of affairs, with little to no mention or inclusion of non-straight couples. 

Perhaps the most egregious part of this advertisement is how it portrays women. The ad suggests to men that if their wives are fat, they should have an affair with a different woman. This narrative objectifies women while portraying men as agents who are free and able to have intercourse with any woman they please. The objectifying nature of Ashley Madison’s advertisements does not stop here either. In this video advertisement, a woman is being recorded running. There is a scene in the advertisement in which the camera zooms into the woman’s breasts as she is running. It is unbelievable and saddening how frequently this site portrays women for nothing more than their physical appearance.

Since the creation of Ashley Madison, the site has received much attention and backlash. The company took a big hit after the 2015 data breach, leading to the company’s CEO stepping down and a significant rebranding of the website, with a big emphasis on changing the slogan for the company. However, this rebranding was short-lived, and in 2017, the site unretired the slogan “Life is short. Have an affair.” Unfortunately, the website continues to produce harmful advertisements, and the user base is only getting larger, hitting 60 million worldwide users as of 2019. Ashley Madison is a harsh example of how hurtful media can be in the present day, and it is important for all of us to realize and push back against harmful media for a better future. 

 Steele, Anne (July 12, 2016). “Ashley Madison Parent Rebrands Itself as Ruby Corp.” The Wall Street Journal.

Benitez, Juan. “Hackers Expose First Ashley Madison Users.” CBS News, August 19, 2015, www.cbsnews.com/news/hackers-expose-first-ashley-madison-users/. Accessed September 27, 2024.

Ashley Madison. www.ashleymadison.com/en-us/. Accessed September 27, 2024.

Sims, Bryan. “Ashley Madison Review.” East Bay Express, September 22, 2015, www.eastbayexpress.com/ashley-madison-review/. Accessed September 27, 2024.

“Ashley Madison – What We Know So Far.” YouTube, uploaded by hMYDDn44p7g, www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMYDDn44p7g. Accessed September 27, 2024.

Casciato, Paul. “The Five Worst Examples of Body Shaming Ads.” Dazed Digital, April 24, 2016, www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/31606/1/the-five-worst-examples-of-body-shaming-ads. Accessed September 27, 2024.