Merits and Limitations of Feminism in Advertisements

Authors Avatar

                                                                                                        Popular Culture                       Major Essay

Popular Culture

Assignment 2

Major essay

Essay topic:

“Discuss the merits and the limitations of one of the major theories of popular cultures (for example, Feminism). Use one example of popular culture to make your case”.


This essay is to establish an analytical discussion of both the merits and the limitations of feminism in the chosen scenario of advertising. Owing to the sophistication of the theories and advertising context, the essay will intermingle both the good values and the drawbacks of feminism theorical agenda with examples to illustrate the case.   The popular culture has a deep impact on the society and social structure. As explained by Strinati (2004), in the modern setting, popular culture is the culture commercially manufactured by a few for the consumption by the masses. The mass media, which includes print, television, movies and music, usually, portray the society in the way that people manufacturing these products interpret the society. These people are also concerned with the commercial success of their product and so must present a culture which they believe will be accepted by the widest audience. In the process, the popular culture often ends up stereotyping people because it is easier to portray women, minorities and foreigners as stereotypes. This stereotyping becomes even more pronounced in advertisements since the advertisements are a form of popular culture which must sell a product in an extremely limited time and space. These limitations mean that they do not have the luxury to develop their characters and must use stereotypes so that they can concentrate on getting the message across.

Although advertisers and others who manufacture these mass cultural images argue that the popular culture only reflects the society, the reverse is also true and the media images at a subconscious level influence the society’s behaviour. This affect of the popular culture on the way the society perceives itself has many people worried, among them the feminists who believe that such limiting images of women in popular culture is having a negative impact on the emancipation of women. Although there is some legitimacy in these feminist fears, the idea that the mass culture should reflect social reality has severe limitations since the society ‘does not confer the same privileges upon women as it does upon men’ (Strinati, 2004, p. 179). Hence the feminist objections to the representation of women in popular media, especially advertisements need to be examined to understand the limitations of the feminist viewpoint.

Before it delves into the representation of women in the popular culture, the paper will first examine the feminist stand. According to Strinati, there are three strands of feminism that variously argue for equal representation of women in media, female separatism or a radical transformation of the relations between the genders. Although each of these strands of feminism may seem to be exclusive of each other, they, in fact, have a profound impact on each other and are shaping the overall development of the feminist movement. However, each of these stands also has their limitations when seen in the light of social realities. The radical feminist stand of female separatism is not only undesirable but also impractical since the society is constructed through the interaction of the genders and in any social interactions, there is bound to be some level of inequality. The social feminist stand of transformation of relations between genders is the more moderate view but such a transformation is bound to be slow since it takes time for individuals and societies to shed centuries of enculturation and adopt new standards. The representation of women in media can prove to be a huge catalyst in bringing about this change since, as already argued, popular culture can have a deep impact on the society. In spite of this, the media representation of women is severely limited by commercial considerations and a true representation of the society would actually hurt the feminist cause.

Join now!

Despite the commercial and social limitations placed on mass advertisements, advertisers have proved to be quick to latch on to the changing social realities and provide a much better reflection of the social changes than any other mass media. To be sure, advertisers, continue to objectify the female body and women continue to be associated with housework, but there has been a sea change in the representations of women over the last few decades. A research by Hesseltine (1982, pp. 236 - 245) of the depiction of women in television advertisements showed that 76% of the time the men were ...

This is a preview of the whole essay