Why are women still objects?

I’m sure that everyone here is familiar with the issue of the image of women in advertising. It’s not news: everyone knows it. I’m just really shocked that we still allow it to be like that. This video (some bits are in Italian, but there’s usually a translation) brought the problem back to my mind.

http://youtu.be/wuyf3407-y4

Some bits are really terrible: “Abbiamo le poppe migliori d’Italia” (alluding to breasts, which can be called the same as the back side of a ship); “Montami a costo zero” (“Ride me for free,” an innuendo using the idea of sex, that in Italian can be said as “assembling”); “We’ve chosen the best products for the World Cup,” with half-naked women in the background; and so on.

It’s obviously disgusting. We shouldn’t allow advertisers to create such images, as they become so powerful women themselves start to accept them. A recent scandal in Italy proves it: according to this article, one of the heads of an Italian air company, a woman, asked the flight attendants to diet in order to appear better-looking in front of the passengers. Apparently, even the uniform is going to change: the skirts will be shorter. Is this fair? How can a woman do this to herself?

Now, everyone’s happy with being sexy  and I’m not saying that everyone should wear what they want. I’m not even saying it’s not ok to see naked people in art or whatever. I can see that sex sells. It’s just that the context, the words make it problematic: even men’s taste should be against such innuendos, that plainly picture women as objects. And, in my view, no one should choose to be an object.