Gender In Advertising

1. What sort of images of women and men dominated advertising pre-1970s? Why was this the case?
After 1950’s the ‘housewife’ image started to decline, however this stereotypical image was still very common throughout the 60’s and 70’s. The reason for the decline is mostly to do with the fact that due to the Second World War, women were gaining more rights. Women had to become the breadwinners whilst their husbands were sent abroad to fight, however when the men came back, women were sent back to their original jobs. The feminist ear soared because women were fighting for more rights, but didn’t get that far, so in adverts their stereotypical image maintained.

2. How did the advertising of the 1970’s continue to perpetuate the stereotype of women, despite depicting women in a greater range of roles?
Schiebe (1979) In a Study of TV Ads found out that women were more concerned about beauty, pleasing men with their looks and family, so even if women were shown to be in different environments, they were still shown in their stereotypical images. This meant that even though the feminist movement had some sort of affect on advertising, women were still represented in their stereotypical roles.

3. Can Gaye Tuchman’s quote regarding under-representation and the ‘symbolic annihilation of women’ still be applied in 21st Century advertising? If so, how?
Symbolic annihilation is basically when media texts under represent a group of people, or represent the group in a different way, which results in viewers undermining the group. I think that this can be still applied to the 21st century. Even until now, women are not equal, we do not associate the sexes to the same occupations, and if we see in an advert, that a woman is in power, we still see her as a sex symbol, a femme fatale, though she has power we still undermine her and treat her like a subordinate, because we’ve been treated with the hypodermic needle theory and have become passive viewers of the media, and accept everything we are shown.

4. Do you agree that adverts, such as those for the 1990’s Boots No. 7, ‘It’s not make-up. Its ammunition.’ campaign, are post-feminist (thereby representing women as better than men?). Explain your answer.
I completely disagree, I think rather than represented women as better than men, and they are saying that women are using their looks and charm to be better than men, rather than being better than them as a sex. Its also related to the quote ‘if looks could kill’ so it’s not really a positive thing, they are saying if you want to be like a femme fatale (who always falls in the end) then wear makeup.

5. Is the representation of women by the media accountable for the results of a survey in which ‘women were up to ten times more likely than men to be unhappy with their body image’?
I think that the media is somewhat accountable for this result, but also the society is to blame and their expectations. There is an unending cycle about who to blame for this, did society influence what we see in the media, or did the media affect the society’s expectations, and we can never come to a true explanation. But I think the media overtly represent women to be ‘perfect’ and the real women are presented as outsiders, so women are unhappy with how they look because they can’t be perfect.

6. Is the contemporary representation of men in advertising perhaps also a negative one where they too are treated as sex objects?
Men are also being objectified, but not as heavily as women are, and have been for so long. Men are still portrayed as just right, and women need to enhance their looks to attract this dominant sex.