Representations of women in advertising

Academic reading: A Critical Analysis of Progressive Depictions of Gender in Advertising

Read these extracts from an academic essay on gender in advertising by Reena Mistry. This was originally published in full in David Gauntlett's book 'Media, Gender and Identity'. Then, answer the following questions:

1) How does Mistry suggest advertising has changed since the mid-1990s?

• Since the mid-1990s, advertising has increasingly employed images in which the gender and sexual orientation of the subjects are markedly (and purposefully) ambiguous.

2) What kinds of female stereotypes were found in advertising in the 1940s and 1950s?

• soon after 1945, women were made to feel guilty by warnings of the 'dangerous consequences to the home' that had begun to circulate. Looking at women's magazines in the 1950s, Betty Friedan (1963) claims this led to the creation of the 'feminine mystique': 'the highest value and the only real commitment for women lies in the fulfilment of their own femininity. The highest good is keeping house and raising children'.

3) How did the increasing influence of clothes and make-up change representations of women in advertising?

• The increasing influence of clothes and make-up  led to women being increasingly portrayed as decorative objects. A poignant example of where this occurs is in perfume advertisements; according to Diane Barthel, one of the most common images here is that of the 'fair maiden'.

4) Which theorist came up with the idea of the 'male gaze' and what does it refer to?

• Laura Mulvey's (1975) theory of the 'male gaze' is important here; she contends that scopophilia (the basic human sexual drive to look at other human beings) has been 'organised' by society's patriarchal definition of looking as a male activity, and being looked at as a female 'passivity'.

5) How did the representation of women change in the 1970s?

• Laura Mulvey's (1975) theory of the 'male gaze' is important here; she contends that scopophilia (the basic human sexual drive to look at other human beings) has been 'organised' by society's patriarchal definition of looking as a male activity, and being looked at as a female 'passivity'.

6) Why does van Zoonen suggest the 'new' representations of women in the 1970s and 1980s were only marginally different from the sexist representations of earlier years?

• According to Liesbet van Zoonen, however, the ability of these images to undermine traditional female stereotypes is superficial. At the level of content analysis, the roles that women take on in these advertisements appear to be progressive (the employee, the active woman); however, with a more semiological approach, van Zoonen asserts that the New Woman 'only departs marginally from her older, more traditional sisters.'

7) What does Barthel suggest regarding advertising and male power?

• Barthel notes that 'today's young women can successfully storm the bastions of male power... without threatening their male counterparts' providing we can reassure them that, underneath the suit, we are still 'all woman', that 'no serious gender defection has occurred'. (there is no real threat to male power.)

8) What does Richard Dyer suggest about the 'femme fatale' representation of women in adverts such as Christian Dior make-up?

• Richard Dyer claims that such images are something of a misrepresentation of women's liberation: "[advertising] agencies trying to accommodate new [feminist] attitudes in their campaigns, often miss the point and equate "liberation" with a type of aggressive sexuality and a very unliberated coy sexiness'

Media Magazine: Beach Bodies v Real Women (MM54)

Now go to our Media Magazine archive and read the feature on Protein World's controversial 'Beach Bodies' marketing campaign in 2015. Read the feature and answer the questions below in the same blogpost as the questions above.

1) What was the Protein World 'Beach Bodies' campaign and why was it controversial?

• The PR team were clearly courting the female market (19-30) into looking their best for the beach this summer. The advert – featuring a tanned, blonde female in a full-frontal pose – generated so much controversy that in July 2015 the UK’s Advertising Standards. The image of the model would shame women who had different body shapes into believing they needed to take a slimming supplement to feel confident wearing swimwear in public.

2) What was the Dove Real Beauty campaign?

• The campaign features real women with real bodies of all races and ages. Dove created an interactive Ad Makeover campaign that put women in charge of the advertisements, where they themselves would choose what they saw as beautiful, not the advertisers. The campaign’s mission is to create a world where beauty is a source of confidence and not anxiety.

3) How has social media changed the way audiences can interact with advertising campaigns? 

• Social media has given audiences an outlet to share their frustrations regarding the advertising campaigns with others which can lead to the company who created the campaign getting boycotted by the consumers as they don't agree with the ideals and beliefs the company is promoting.

4) How can we apply van Zoonen's feminist theory and Stuart Hall's reception theory to these case studies?

• We can apply Stuart Hall's reception theory to these case studies as in the Protein world "beach body ready" advert the audience had an oppositional reading as they viewed it as body shaming them and trying to say a women isn't beautiful unless her body looks like the models while the audiences believe that they can look beautiful and "beach body ready" without looking a certain way, this can also link with van Zoonen's theory as it shows how the media influences the construction of gender as in the past this ad wouldn't have caused this reaction but due to the changes in how media represents women audiences now find this type of content to be harmful and prefer things that agree with their more modern beliefs such as the Dove "Real Beauty".

5) Through studying the social and historical context of women in advertising, do you think representations of women in advertising have changed in the last 60 years?

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