Gender & Advertising

1. What sort of images of women and men dominated advertising pre-1970s? Why was this the case?

Media, Gender and Identity (Gauntlett), outlines that women in magazine adverts prior to the 1970’s were rarely shown to be in paid work and when they were it would usually be a stereotypical role, ‘a smiling secretary’ or ‘hairdresser’ and women in advertisement from 1950’s to early 1970’s predominantly had a ‘Housewife’ image.
However Men were most likely to be seen in authority roles and ‘were ten times more likely than women to provide the dependable voice’, which shows that men were the dominant figures in advertising prior the 1970’s.

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?

Content analysis of advertising in the early 1970’s found strong evidence of stereotypes of women, all ads featuring women; three-quarters were for kitchen and bathroom products.
Advertising continued to perpetuate the stereotype of women during the 1970’s since women were more than twice as likely as men to be shown inside the home and when in seen in paid work environment, they were more often than not subservient to men.


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?

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 think the No.7 campaign is post-feminist since the tagline/slogan is portraying ‘make-up’ as important as ‘ammunition’, and the make-up can be symbolising the women and the ammunition is symbolising the men. The binary opposition of the make-up and the ammunition help to put across the post-feminism view.

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’?

The representation of women in the media can be accountable for the result of the survey which shows that ‘women were up to ten times more likely than men to be unhappy with their body image, since the UK Beauty industry takes £8.9billion a year out of women’s pockets and that shows that how beauty conscious women are now in the modern age, which is proven due to the fact that the cosmetic surgery industry is booming. (Greer) The beauty ideal seems to be a substantial pressure on women to make them look more like the mediated ideal which appears to be ridiculous.

6. Is the contemporary representation of men in advertising perhaps also a negative one where they too are treated as sex objects?

Men as well as women are told that they must have a perfect look to attract the opposite sex, so now people no longer seem have a critique of sexism in the media, instead people are left to with a criticism of advertising for telling everybody that they have to look great at all times. ‘Today’s man has pumped his pecs and shoulders and exhibits well-defined abs’. So men can be also treated as sex objects due to the advertisements that represent men as hunky sex objects for women, and men.