I was somewhat surprised by the large sexual focus in advertising. Though less frequently shown than in the United States, women were often sexually objectified in magazines, posters, billboards, and even manikins in store windows. I saw how femininity was being portrayed in the same way that Simone de Beauvoir described in The Second Sex, "To be feminine is to appear weak, futile, docile....any self-assertion will diminish her femininity and her attractiveness.” Advertisements do not only sell products but they sell the sexist, misogynistic, subjugating ideologies that enforce the oppression and exploitation of women. Roland Barthes notes the intentionality behind this in his statement that in a photograph “an object has been worked on, chosen, composed, constructed, and treated according to professional, aesthetic or ideological norms which are so many factors of connotation.” Photography can be used to perpetuate or normalize objectification.