Jean Kilbourne, probably the best-known advocate of raising awareness about the exploitation of women in advertising, claims that, “we are exposed to over 2000 ads a day, constituting perhaps the most powerful educational force in society.” If that number is correct, we would view as many as 730,000 ads a year. Jean claims that the image of women in ads is negatively influencing the view men have of women in our society and how women view themselves. She claims that the constant barrage of images and texts depicted in ads, suggesting the idea that ‘the thinner a woman is, the better she is’, has a strong influence. The extremely and focused advertising can have another effect in young women, especially. It can lead to dissatisfaction, and in some cases, eating disorders. Rader Programs, an Eating Disorder center states that, when even young girls watch and look at magazines they have commonly think to live up to the super-thin look that most models today have if they are to be beautiful. The average for a girl to start dieting is now eight, compared to the fourteen-year-old average of 1970.
These images that girls are trying to live up to are not realistic, though. The average model is 5’11 and 117 pounds, while the average is 5’4 and weighs 140 pounds. As the average gets larger, the average model gets thinner. Partly as a result of this unrealistic ideal, 81% of ten year old girls are afraid of being fat, and four out of five are unhappy with their .
When examining various ads, one can see that there is most definitely a slant on the type of models used across the board, for example, in mainstream magazines. Most models, male and female alike, usually have ‘perfect’ bodies (slim for women, muscular for men), look happy, have a good social and financial status, are usually tall and seem to be of Caucasian descent. Of course there are exceptions, but for the most part these seem to target a specific market, other than the ‘General Public’. Ads seem to be tailored to the specific audience of the magazines they appear in, so the product that is displayed with a white woman in ‘Cosmopolitan’, might be accompanied by a colored woman in ‘Ebony’ or ‘O’, Oprah Winfrey’s magazine.
This however, apart from the occasional exception seems to be the end of the similarities between men and women in visual advertising. Several websites and studies, including the previously mentioned website from Rebecca Zarchikoff, examine the pictures more closely. They look at body language, signs of aggression, dominant features, relevance to the product advertised, what part of the body was actually photographed or depicted, facial expressions, phallic symbols, ‘exoticization’ and objectification of the models, just to name a few. A well comprehensive and developed resource for more info about how women are shown in advertising is the website of Scott A. Lukas, Ph.D. The website has over 1500 printed ads as part of Lukas’ “gender ads project”, which compares all imaginable subjects, collected over several years of work. Lukas comments, “Women’s bodies are objectified in common ways. In the case of many popular ads, the objectification of the woman occurs through the association of her being with her breasts.” Here it becomes clear on where the alleged problems come in. Women may only be depicted with parts of their bodies, like their legs or their chests, while men usually have their faces shown. If both genders have faces, the male usually looks at the camera, while the female often looks another way. Some opinions seem to suggest that this makes us observers or voyeurs when it comes to the female, while we process the male face as something or somebody we can relate to. Lukas wrote on his website that, “When men and women appear in ads together, the women are often depicted as weaker than the male, either through composition of the ad or particular situations in the scene” .Women often have their heads or faces covered or seem to have their mouths closed most of the time, while males have them open. This might suggests that the viewer does not need to care what the woman has to say, as long as she looks good. This is the more subtle approach in the objectification of women. The more obvious objectification is apparent when women’s bodies are representing a product, for example a bottle of perfume or beer in the shape of a woman’s body.
In today’s media driven, fast moving age, ads sell more than just products. They sell lifestyles and dreams. Ads used to be simply a way of introducing a new product to the market or the masses, but even back then, woman were usually depicted in household settings or tending motherly duties. These days, ads sell images, ideas, even principles and ethics; however, the depiction of woman has not changed all that much, except the inclusion of sexual and more dramatic imagery. Do the advertisements reflect the evolution of women's place and role in society? In a way, we can assert that the advertisers knew how to adjust to the global evolution of the customs. Moreover, the way advertising treats women nowadays is not only the reflection of the advertisers' misogyny. It reflects as well the hippie and feminist movements' failure: They asked for equality. As a matter of fact, women have not yet got it. And men? Do they got it?
During the last years, diverse changes have modified the social constructions of gender. The masculinity is under a redefinition process. These changes have been widely studied, without paying attention to men issues. TV ads are a good issue to study male and female representations because they present codes and symbols thus establishing images in the society. The “new man” is suffering an objectification of his body through the creation of new products and homosexual trends, changing from a “traditional man” image, based on physical strength and the patriarchal order, to a new man idea where his affection, eroticism and fashion, challenges the old images of men in television.
With the rise of content and discourse analysis about gender in ads, feminists attempted to show how the female images were used as passive objects of the male gaze. Since feminism deals with the oppression of women by men where everything male was assumed to be the norm, men were frequently treated as if they had no gender. In the struggle of women’s submissive situation, they forgot the fact that not all men are the same, hence they created an ironic ‘‘sex-role paradigm’’. Thus, the feminist movement set in motion the masculinist movement where men deal with the oppression of men by objectification.
During the last decade, the man has been changing his image in TV ads. Following the trend of the marketing strategies and creation of artificial needs, men are leaving the ‘traditional’ masculinity based on dominance, homophobia and self-mastery to a more flexible male image. Television commercials have come a long way in how they depict men and male bodies. Over the last several years more and more naked men have been popping up in the television commercials, selling everything from cars to deodorants to shaving products to clothing to beverages Some scholars state that advertising has encouraged a ‘‘feminization’’ of culture, as it puts all potential consumers in the classic role of the female: submissive, seeing themselves as objects. The feminization of culture is evident in men’s advertisements, where many of the promises made to women are now being made to men. This seems to be more visible on printed ads, but how is it evidenced on TV ads?
The new man has the ability to offer different sort of products in many ways. In contrast to the rigid and limited traditional man, the new man can be flexible and useful for a whole bunch of new products creating artificial needs, having an effect on the consumption. The new man is like a joker card: it can be used in almost any product ad always open to new possibilities to experience new situations.
The mew man’s roles help to identify the different performances played in TV ads. we can appreciate the majority of Fashion as the main role, seconded by Gay Oriented. Because of the self-expression the new man has for himself, Fashion, mainly related with ads of clothes or high-tech products, seems to be way where this statement is evidenced. TV ads presenting fashion roles do so in a metrosexual way where such elements as piercing, jewelry and trendy hair styles are used as well as Urban and Stylish clothes. Gay oriented roles were characterized by the exposure of naked bodies in a moderated way.
The traditional man is regularly superior in relation to women and less to man, equal to other male partners, and passive to women. Interesting is how the traditional man behave, when, for example, his wife or mother buys clothes for him –a traditional tan doesn’t care what he is wearing because he is not interested in fashion.
On the other hand, the new man is submissive more frequently to man and less to women, equal in terms of both sexes. Also superior in relation to woman and less to men.
The new man has also new ways of power. It is not strength but intelligence and money what makes him powerful. Intelligence here is used as the capability to use his mind and ideas to overcome situations, where money is the use of luxury or other means of wealth. Beauty applies as well for the new man, especially when it comes to fashion issues where he can use his clothes and personal appearance to do and get what he wants. This use of ‘‘new power’’ for men allows them to find and define their masculinity in a different way than the traditional aggressive behavior. This is probably resulting of the increase of capitalism in our attitude, where money and the advantages it brings –as fashion and beauty- take an important place in the social construction of the new man.
The images of masculinity in TV ads are not monolithic and static, but rather diverse and changing. The traditional man, representation of the patriarchal order, is being challenged by a new nan image. This new man is characterized by a rupture of the respectful father-son relationship, looking for freedom to express its emotions and with liberty to selfexpression, and self-satisfaction. It is also the joker card as it plays in situations where the traditional man cannot fit.
This study concentrated on stereotypes associated with women and man in advertisements. The images of Man are changing, and the new man has arrived to stay. It is challenging the old traditional man with new trends and images as it is by now more represented in the TV ads. This challenge to patriarchal order does not mean a rupture with a male-dominated industry as women remain under represented and in submissive positions. Further research should look at the impact of this whole era of Fashion, Beauty and Money in the consumption behaviour to evaluate how far the advertisements can control our lives.
While this research examined current portrayal of women in television commercials, there are still many areas which have not been studied. While stereotyping exists and is pervasive in our media we do not know if it is pervasive in other countries. Little research has been done studying the stereotypes in other parts of the world. Future research could investigate this possibility.
References
Artz, Nancy, Munger, Jeanne, and Purdy, Warren, 1999, ‘Gender Issues in Advertising Language’, Women and Language, Fall, 22, 2, pp. 20-26.
Bovee, Courtland L., Thill, John V., Dovel, George P., and Wood, Marian Burk, 1995, Advertising Excellence, McGraw-Hill, USA.
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Joanna Bator, Wizerunek kobiety w reklamie telewizyjnej, 1998, wyd. Instytut Spraw Publicznych, Warszawa
Monika Wasilewska, Wzory kobiet w reklamie telewizyjnej, w: Portrety kobiet i mężczyzn, pod red. R. Siemieńskiej, 1997, Wyd. Naukowe \"Scholar\", Warszawa.
Report to the Minister for Women’s Affairs, 2002, ‘The Portrayal of Women in Advertising’, Portrayal of Women Advisory Committee, Victoria, Australia.