Advertising: The representations of women in advertising

The following tasks are challenging - some of the reading is university-level but this will be great preparation for the next stage in your education after leaving Greenford. Create a new blogpost called 'Representations of women in advertising' and work through the following tasks.

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?

• advertisers have used images in which the gender and sexual orientation is ambiguous 
• there is a growing number of homosexual images 

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

Feminists wanted women to work and have their own careers but after the war the media was heavily pushing the idea that women belong in the house as mothers and wives and created the 'feminine mystique' which meant that a woman's highest form a fulfilment should be their femininity. In the 1950s there was a boom in the economy and the media started reinforcing the traditional housewife and mother roles  in order to get women to buy household products like cleaning supplies and groceries.

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

It led to women being portrayed as objects just there for decorative purposes, something for people to look at and not adding anything (meaningful) to the stories.

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

Mulvey - women are presented in ways that objectify them and are only their to be looked at which perpetuates the patriarchal society 

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

There were new images labelled as the new woman which portrayed women as more confident and independent. However Van Zoonen said that this was not as progressive as they thought, since they placed emphasis on the woman's clothing and presented it as something for women to get excited about as they have an opportunity to dress up. The woman is portrayed confidently in a work place setting however she is not actually working so there is no threat to male power.

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?

• women were only in the workplace, not actually working
• using the woman just to get a point across - they are no real threat to men in the workplace
• women are excited to dress up to work

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

'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'

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

women can use makeup to make themselves sexually attractive, she is constructing herself as a spectacles - something to be looked at and enjoyed 

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 campaign is not focused around health but around looking good - you have to be skinny in order to look good for the beach or be considered beautiful 

2) What was the Dove Real Beauty campaign?

They used women of very different body types and who looked different to each other the the normal beauty standard, they also used a sketch artist to draw women - once based on the woman description about themselves and one of a strangers description about the woman, they found that the strangers one was more accurate and women tended to be overly critical of themselves

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

Old sayings like no publicity is bad publicity no longer apply because people can boycott places if they don`t agree with them 

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

Gender is constructed in media texts to portray women as spectacles like in the are you beach body ready advert and it is aimed at the male gaze and to shame women into buying their product- this is the oppositional reading, the preferred reading is that it provides health so women can be confident in bikinis however its clear that this reading is rejected and it is hard to see how anybody would accept it.

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?

It is clear that representations of women have gotten better and there is less objectification of women and less portraying them in traditional roles however it does still happen and I think it will continue to happen but will improve or be less obvious at least