Online, Social Participatory Index:

Representation of women in advertising

1) How does Mistry suggest advertising has changed since the mid-1990s?

Women where used to advertise many products, explicitly using their bodies as means of getting the product across to men

2) What kinds of female stereotypes were found in advertising in the 1940s and 1950s?

House wife stereotypes emerged due to the economic boom and an increase in house hold products, which lead to advertisers targeting women in particular as they where assumed to be the ones who'd buy these products.

3) How did the increasing influence of clothes and make-up change representations of women in advertising?

Women where then shown with make-up and the sense of clothing also changed, this further objectified women to the point of being purely sex objects. 

4) Which theorist came up with the idea of the 'male gaze' and what does it refer to?

Laura Mulvey came up with the idea of a "Male Gaze", and it refers to the objectification of women in advertisement as they began being used to sell products for men, using women as something to catch the males attention. Therefore it was seen as women only being there for men to look at. This also links into other medias such as movies and music videos.

5) How did the representation of women change in the 1970s?

Women became more independent and assertive. They where no longer presented as being below men, this was referred to as the "New Woman".

6) Why does van Zoonen suggest the 'new' representations of women in the 1970s and 1980s were only marginally different from the sexist representations of earlier years?

Because they where pretty much the same as the years prior and haven't actually shown any progress. 

7) What does Barthel suggest regarding advertising and male power?

Barthel claims that there is no actual threat to male power which means that even if a women is seen to be wearing a suit and working in something professional there is still a sense of power of a male over this presentation. This means that women are always unconsciously and consciously controlled whether they work or not.

8) What does Richard Dyer suggest about the 'femme fatale' representation of women in adverts such as Christian Dior make-up?

That this new form of advertisement actually misses the point and only "seems" to be adjusting to the new feminist ideology instead of actually conforming to it. It still sexually objectifies women. 

Media Magazine: Beach Bodies v Real Women (MM54)

1) What was the Protein World 'Beach Bodies' campaign?           

This was a advert that was launched to advertise a slimming down product with a model showing the ideal beach body and this created controversy amongst the public and was banned in the London underground.

2) Why was it controversial?      

    

This advert was controversial because as it was trying to promote this product it was also making other females more conscious about their bodies which changed perspectives of the body type type they had as it suggested that if you have this body only then u can wear swimwear in public.  

3) What did the adverts suggest to audiences?

Audiences thought that this was unrealistic as the body of the model that was portrayed as deceitful for audiences because this wasn't a good representation of what women's body actually look like.  

4) How did some audiences react? 

Some audience reacted to this advert by some women posing in bikini's in front of the advert and showing a genuine representation of their bodies. 

5) What was the Dove Real Beauty campaign?

This campaign was representing real women with real bodies and of all races and ages and put them in a more dominant position of what they saw of their bodies and what they found beautiful.

6) How has social media changed the way audiences can interact with 

The social media has changed in numerous ways as now people are allowed to contradict these adverts with their own opinions and go against it if they are not happy with it. Social media now offers more consumer choice and they are able to talk about it through social media.

7) How can we apply van Zoonen's feminist theory and Stuart Hall's reception theory to these case studies?

Van Zoonen's feminist theory could applied to this as  the advert of the beach body is promoting this product through using a sexualised image of the women and how their appearance should be like as we can see from the model's image. She argues that the media helps construct these gender differences as the image could also be seen as giving in to the male gaze and offering a sense of pleasure of males.

Stuart Hall's reception theory could be applied to this because this theory states that media texts are encoded by the producer meaning that whoever produces the texts fills the products with values and messages. This can be applied to the Beach body advert as we can see that the producer has intended to promote this weight loss product by showing us what a women's body should look like which is the dominant reading, the negotiated reading is when audiences don't fully agree or disagree so they accept the advert but apply their own understanding to it so they would see the advert but not actually buy this product due to the image that is represented of the model. The audience may not have a same life experience which is why they may perceive it in this way which is the oppositional reading.

8) Through studying the social and historical context of women in advertising, do you think representations of women in advertising have changed in the last 60 years?

I Believe that women's representation in advertising has changed to a significant extent because women used to be presented with traditional stereotypes in a house environment normally with a male figure. This has developed as now there is women being represented in more of a sexualised way independently and there is more of a liberating perspective that is given to their image