The woman in pieces: advertising and the construction of feminine identity (original) (raw)
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Aesthetics and Gender - The Polish Journal of Aesthetics, 2016
The article presents the evolution of the language of advertising from the 1960s to the present, presenting various images of women in advertising. Simultaneously a theoretical analysis has been carried out of the demands of second-wave feminism, which exerted significant influence on the creation of images of women in the mass media. The objective of our comparison of feminist theory with advertising practice is an attempt to answer the question of whether the present media image of women liberated from the binary sexual order and weighted towards the genderqueer and/or transgender phenomena is the desired realisation of the feminist demands for emancipation of and equality for women announced in the second half of the twentieth century.
Following the poststructuralist discourse on human beings as social constructions, this essay is part of an analysis that explores the role of design in the configuration of bodies and identities through the consumption of images and, subsequently, objects, services and practices. The advertising photograph, as a specific shape of the iconic language in the contemporary societies, plays a crucial role in the construction of who we are by guiding, somehow, those referential and reiterative actions that materialize what the social discourse claims (following Judith Butler's concept of performativity). Given the importance of the advertising images as reference not only of an ideal society, but also of ideal human beings, this text wonders about the procedures through which such images relate their referents under the following hypothesis: the advertising photograph shifts individual's identities by making them imagine, envision and move toward an idealistic version of themselves.
A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF MALE & FEMALE REPRESENTATION IN ADVERTISEMENTS
Granthaalayah Publications and Printers, 2023
The study analyses the representation of men and women in advertisements along with its connection with our society's prevailing social conditions. A sum of ten advertisements from various parts of the world are used throughout the study to identify the gender representation, and sexual biases present in the advertisements. The advertisements are for popular brands from various sectors such as cosmetics, Food & Beverage, Clothing & Accessories, households, Electronics, and automobiles. Two advertisements from each sector have been used for the study. This includes the brands such as Kiehl's Skincare, and Nivea from Cosmetics, Frooti, and Slice from Food and Beverage, Warner, and Weyenberg Massagic shoes from Clothing & Accessories, Mr. Clean, and Dettol from the Household sector, and Sony Vita from Electronics, and Ford Figo from Automobile. All the advertisements chosen are of different periods including both vintage, and recent considering the continuity of hyper objectification, and sexualization in the advertisements. This includes a period from the 1970s to 2017 and journals, articles, and reports from recent years. Many advertisements use sensual content to grab the audience's attention, thereby selling the products. Along with the Critical Discourse Analysis, this study also follows Fairclough's Three-Dimensional Model, Media Representation, and the theory by Laura Mulvey.
Journal for Educators,Teachers and Trainers, 2023
The study qualitatively explores several past and recent advertisements that have evolved, conflicting and defeating women's roles in society. The study further discusses how advertisements have accelerated the concept of 'emphasized femininity' (Patterson et al., 2009) through the inevitable maledominated population discussed by Brule (2020). It contributes to an ever-expanding challenge of gender disparity, stereotyping women and docile responsibilities, thereby propagating inequalities through the digital and printed advertising world. The objective of the research is to purposely select regular advertisements and their symbolic representation that might have promoted women's engagement, their struggle, either responsible for identity stagnation or an expansive identity. The paper has strategically reviewed popular content that uncovers to transform societal myth and women objectification in restoring their equal natural existence. The study concludes the usage and abuses of advertisement concordant to inter-disciplinary inquiry into the laws, policies, and sociopolitical activities within a democratic state.
2019
The main purpose of the article is to characterize discourse strategies pertaining to the presentation of the male and female body in modern advertising and to describe how the images of body contribute to the creation or blurring of gender differences. In order to better represent the phenomena that have appeared or intensified in recent decades, theoretical considerations concerning gender and body were presented. The main theoretical framework is Raewyn Connell's concept of hegemonic masculinity, the article also makes use of other theoretical concepts relevant in the context (e.g. the theories of Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard or Erving Goffman). The modern culture of the west, and especially advertising is characterised by two opposite, though non-equivalent trends: on the one hand, there are bodies gendered in the traditional way (male mesomorph body type and a slender female body). On the other hand, the opposite trend is associated with blurring gender differences (e....
Woman and gender in advertising: A semiotic reading
Istanbul University - DergiPark, 2019
Semantic advertising analyzes are frequently found in the literature in different aspects. In this study, a semiotic analysis of Nokia mobile phone advertising has been tried to reach some data about gender (related to gender based use of technology). We reached to some conclusions in the case of using technology, with considering gender effect in an advertisement text. For this purpose, it is hoped that the findings obtained through semiotic analysis method via an advertisement text will shed light on studies on advertising and gender. In this article, a semiotic reading on women and gender was carried out in advertising and it was determined that sexism was used extensively in the ad text chosen as an example. Esthetized and implicit violence against women in advertising has also taken place in the study as another determination. In this article, it is determined that gender is used extensively in the ad text selected as a model. This study shows an example of women's representations in advertising. Besides that,-another of the findings we have obtained as an analysis is that-the advertisements were represented by editing real life and that the truth is manipulated. As a result, it can be said that; advertisements naturalize / normalize, legitimize, nourish, support / reinforce, strengthen, build and rebuild the sexist patterns that exist in society, and however also represent / construct reality.
Balirano, G. 2015. Framing Identities in Advertising: Multimodal Discourse Analysis
Balirano, G. 2015. “Framing Identities in Advertising: Multimodal Discourse Analysis”. In Balirano, G. / Nisco, M.C. (eds), Language, Theory & Society: Essays on English Linguistics and Culture, pp. 2-40. Napoli: Liguori Editore. , 2015
This chapter explores the theoretical framework used in social semiotic studies through some analytical instantiations based on the Multi-Modal Discourse Analysis (MMDA) of issues connected to gender and race in advertising. By means of a discursive/social semiotic perspective, print adverts are here investigated as a global discourse worthy of critical investigation. In particular, the exploitation of the human body, in promotional discourses, is seen as having an important role in the construction of gendered and racial identity representation. Drawing on Kress and van Leeuwen’s ground-breaking volume, Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (1996), the chapter does not aim, however, to present a complete and exhaustive account or theory of visual grammar. Rather, it simply attempts to introduce some rudimentary visual elements that can be used to classify iconic images and, especially, verifiably detect the visual means adopted in the mediated construction of stereotyped gendered and racial identities. My main aim is to observe and analyse the different types of identities construed in promotional discourse from a diachronic perspective, paying particular attention to the way the representation of the human body is used as a semiotic resource as well as a promotional strategy. After a preliminary methodological overview of the underpinning theories informing this chapter, which briefly range from Halliday’s SFL to recent developments in the field of Multimodal Discourse Analysis, a practical recapitulating grid for establishing some important criteria in the analysis of ‘semiotic metafunctions’ is provided in paragraph 2. The VINCorpus, a diachronic multimodal corpus of magazine and newspaper ads comprising print ads produced from the 40s to the 60s in the Anglophone contexts of Britain, the US and Canada, is introduced and analysed in the third paragraph. The MMDA of three ‘vintage’ print adverts highlights the strict connection between advertising and the way promotional discourses are culturally dependent and able to influence important aspects of social practice. In particular, a diachronic approach to the biased construction of identities in ads proves to be very informative to contemporary society’s understanding of the resilience, whether intentional or not, of gender and racial prejudice still perpetrated in our cultures and societies today. Indeed, if such strict categories of gender and race are still upheld, despite “a kind of stubborn ‘weight’ of history” (Pitcher, 2014: 145), within complex and complicated discourses of injustices and inequalities, power and hegemony, it then becomes compulsory to persistently reiterate how gendered and racial stereotypes keep on construing negative meanings in social representations.
Advertisements and Depiction of the Woman Image: A Critique on Feminism
Journal of English Language and Literature, 2018
By promulgating the principle of equal status for the women, the movement of feminism has questioned, criticized, and protested against the conventional images of woman. By re-defining the existence of woman it compelled both men and women of the society to comprehend the identity of the woman from a different, hitherto neglected perspective. However, with the rampant socio-cultural changes due to the globalization, feminism has been trapped in new trauma. In this post-capital, post-post-modern world, all the revolutionary ideas are swiped away. Amidst this, several rejected values are re-nurturing their roots. This revival has made many revolutionary movements and thoughts dead. By watching the media that is the complete product of globalization and especially the advertisements that are the effective means of communication and manifesting tools of the contemporary culture one is sure to ask whether like all other disciplines there is the death of feminism. The presen...
Deconstruction of the gender binary in advertising: an interpretive analysis and discussion
Postgraduate dissertation awarded as Outstanding (A+). Abstract follows below. I hope you all enjoy. "The gender binary is a socially constructed system that classifies people by sex into two distinct, disconnected, polarised classifications of masculine and feminine. Historically, this paradigm has caused and reproduced a vast gamut of stereotypes, acceptable identities and expected behaviours which curbed and marginalised any other nonconforming types of expressions and existences. Marketing has long observed and applied such dyadic perspective, especially when it comes to advertising. However, intellectual and social fields such as feminism, postmodernism, post-structuralism, queer studies and queer theory have been challenging such dichotomy. Gender has been demonstrating to be a subjective individuality with fluid characteristics that may shift according to time and context. Hence, this study discourses about gender from its broad concepts to its co-relation with advertising. Moreover, an interpretive analysis methodology is developed and applied to observe and discuss how advertising has been able to adapt and contribute to this new social reality."