Gender and Advertising

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Gender and Advertising

Our world is the world of advertising. We are bombarded with ads driving around our cities and towns, reading newspapers or magazines, visiting websites and turning on television. The constant exposure for its contents has a great influence on our everyday life, on our views, ideas, values, perception of reality and us. Nowadays advertising is a huge industry worth billions in every available currency.

Jean Kilbourne in her article „Beauty and the Beast of Advertising” says: „Advertising is the foundation and economic lifeblood of the mass media. The primary purpose of the mass media is to deliver an audience to advertisers”.(1)

Women perform in the majority of advertisements. Most of the ads propagate stereotypical image of women and men in the society.

Depending of the product advertised there are different kinds of stereotypes used, as far as women are concerned: the whole or dismembered feminine body, a domestic woman, woman as a mythical individual.

The whole feminine body is always young and attractive, usually partly undressed. It appears in ads addressed to men as an element taking their attention or as a symbol of the effectiveness of the product.

In such advertisements woman performs as a symbol of sex. Jean Kilbourne writes: „The sex object is a mannequin, a shell. Conventional beauty is her only attribute.”(1)

The stereotypical man' s outlook is usually as conventional as woman's. Cortese in his article „ Constructed bodies...” emphasizes: „The ideal man in ads is young, handsome, clean-cut, perfect and sexually alluring Now the muscular guy dominates the runaways and magazine pages”.

The very important issue to discuss is the mutual relationship between these two- a man and a woman. The picture above is a perfect example. Cortese notices: ‘ masculinity is defined in opposition to feminity. In short, masculine images are dominant, intimidating, and violent, while feminine images are subordinate, receptive and passive”(2). This is one of the ways the advertising industry contributes to promoting extremal behavior – violence. „Violence as a genetically programmed male behavior, the use of military and sports symbolism to enhance the masculine appeal and identification of products... In short, in advertising violence becomes fashionable and urbane”.(2)

One of the techniques used in cosmetics' advertising is separating parts of feminine body. Here attributes are long hair (shampoo ads), big eyes with long lashes (eye cosmetics), sensual lips (lipstick), smooth skin (soaps and lotions) etc. 

House cleaning products demand an image of a domestic woman. Jean Kilmore articles this accurately: „The housewife, pathologically obsessed by cleanliness and lemon-fresh scents, debates cleaning products and worries about her husband's ring around the collar”.(1). She is not attractive in general but she is useful socially. She owns a family she has to take care of. This is her lifetime mission of making her husband and children happy. The housewife's appearance is ordinary; she looks modest and is not very intellectual developed, although thrifty and provident. Her world is limited to neighborhood.

The mythical individual is the synonym of everything we want to be or to have. These are unreachable beauties or women famous, rich or admired. These personify the dreams of the viewer.

To overcome these long-lasting advertisement stereotypes is a very challenging task.

One of the methods to apply is simply changing the types of ads printed in feminine magazines or broading the range of products they promote. Gloria Steinem, the founder and editor of “Ms.” magazine reveals in her text „Sex, Lies, and Advertising” the difficult pattern of making this real: „We decided to proceed in two stages. First, we would

convince makers of “people products” used by both men and women but advertised mostly to men-cars, credit cards, insurance, sound equipment, financial services ad the like-that their ads should be placed in a women’s magazine. Since they were accustomed to the division between editorial and advertising in news and general interest magazines, this would allow our editorial content to be free and diverse. Second, we would add the best ads for whatever traditional “women’s products” (clothes, shampoo, fragrance, food, and so on) that surveys showed "Ms." readers used. But we would ask them to come in without the usual quid pro quo of “complementary copy”.(3). One should notice this was a long-lasting war full of failures, tricks and artful ideas to persuade the rich and powerful advertisement industry to modify their views.

Thank to the work of "Ms." journalists we can watch more often promotions as Dove brand made in 2004. The campaign encouraged people to share their opinions on the issue of the definition of beauty. Women advertising the products were finally as real as we are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=lnOSZX4tpOA

1. Jean Kilbourne, „Beauty and the Beast of Advertising”

2. Anthony J. Cortese, PROVOCATEUR, Images of Women and Minorities in Advertising, chapter „Constructed bodies, deconstructing ads: Sexism in advertising”

3. Gloria Steinem's "Sex, Lies, and Advertising"