Representations of Women in Advertising

Pre-production blog entry:

Advertising surrounds us all in our everyday lives, whether it be an advert on the television, or posters on a wall we engage in advertisement daily. Adverts also play a key role in the stereotyping of gender, specifically women. Adverts are used to sell or promote a product however, a huge part of marketing is who’s selling the product. On screen adverts use attractive women as a goal for women to be, or a desire for men to achieve. I wanted to look into advertising and the portrayal of women, going way back to WW1, and comparing it to today’s advertising, both similarities and differences over 100 years. Also looking at how women are stereotyped in society and is reflected through adverts.

To present this research I am going to make a 5 minute video made up of clips from adverts and posters. Accompanying these clips I will have a voice over discussing the theories behind advertisements and how they create negative gender stereotypes for women. My production piece is aimed at people of all ages and all genders, to open audience’s eyes to see how roles of women in advertising are portrayed in contrast to men. The theories I will be discussing are: Laura Mulvey and ‘The Male Gaze’ (Sampson, 2015) and how it plays a role in the portrayals of women for the pleasure of men. Also looking at Lindsey Clay’s ideas of the 5 main stereotypes of women in advertising (Clay, 2017).

Domestic obsessive- A woman’s role is to clean, that women enjoy cleaning
Selfless nurturer- The mother role, self-sacrificing
The sex object- for the pleasure of men, sees women as objects rather than people
The unobtainable goddess- a representation of the ‘perfect women’ for women to aspire too
The bit- part- supporting background character for male protagonist.

To back up my research I am going to conduct a survey. By doing a survey I can gather opinions from the general public as well as theories and my own perspective. All of the data I gather will be private and confidential to keeping the survey anonymous.

Production blog entry:

I began my research of representations of women in advertising my studying a variety of adverts on youtube, also looking at print media for poster advertisements etc. I saw the gender stereotypes as soon as I began looking through advertisements with women such as: the mother, the bit-part, domestic obsessive etc. all relating to Clays 5 main stereotypes. Most adverts tended to sexualize the women, with no relation to the actual product itself. As I went along I saved all the links for the clips I found most relevant to my topic of interest. Once I had gathered enough clips and images I began to write out my script including key theories and points to accompany the footage. The script was fairly time consuming as I wanted to include as much of a deep discussion of the issues surrounding representation of women in advertising as possible in the time frame of 5 minutes. So condensing my sentences and points was really important to allow me to add as many arguments as possible.

When it came to piecing my footage and clips together it was the most time consuming as I had a lot of footage and had to piece it to my voice over exactly to create a clear piece to get my argument across. I also found half way through I didn’t have enough clips so had to find more to fill up my piece as I wanted plenty of clear examples of the representations I was discussing. To accompany my piece I used free background music from BenSound under the creative commons licence. Adding the music just created a bit more depth to my piece.

Post production blog entry: At the end of my piece I was really pleased with what I had created, as it was a strong argument as to why and how women are stereotyped in advertisements, primarily in a negatively aspect. The video was time consuming to make as the editing took a lot of time a patience to get used to however, having used the Adobe software previously, I could go right ahead and begin editing my piece. The ideas of Lindsey Clay were really useful to find and the accompanying video of all the stereotypes broken down was useful, as she clearly explained the reasons why behind these strong stereotypes. After studying these adverts I strongly agree with the stereotypes and now when witnessing adverts I can’t help but see the negative connotations surrounding them. Laura Mulvey’s theory of ‘the male gaze’ fit really well amongst my video and supported my argument. As it is clear advertisements aimed at men use women to draw their attention. Placing women in adverts sexually for the pleasure of the male audience.

Script:

Advertisements have been around since the Egyptian times, however since then things have drastically changed in the world of advertising. It surrounds us everywhere on billboards, buses, apps, TV, Radio and so many more places, making it impossible to avoid them. Advertising persuades audiences through images of others who have been transformed to make consumers feel dissatisfied until they make the purchase of the product being advertised. A large portion of advertising surrounds who is promoting the product itself.

In this video I will be discussing the ways in which women are stereotyped in advertising using Lindsey Clay’s theory and research on the 5 main stereotypes. I will also be looking at Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze that is applied heavily to advertisements as an example of how male approval is still of huge importance in today’s society. In my audience research I conducted survey where over 50% of people believed women are sexualised in adverts. I will be looking into this throughout my study.

During the 1900’s women were heavily stereotyped, primarily as the ‘Domestic obsessive’ one of Clay’s stereotypes, placing women in a role of cleaning and house work. Women during the 1930s pre-war time specifically, were constantly shown their position in the household to be in the kitchen and cleaning. This advert shown of woman being happy with a hoover for Christmas is ironic, as if this was shown today it would be slated for the way it presents women and their role of doing domestic jobs. Another one of Clay’s stereotypes is the ‘selfless nurturer’ in other words the maternal mother figure, in adverts such as this 1980’s Oxo cube advert where the mum is given the role to please every member of her family over pleasing herself. Women have always and are still today given the role of mothers, cooking and cleaning. Adverts at the same time period of the 1930’s for men surround fashion and cars, ways for men to create an impression and how to be a more powerful, juxtaposing the representations of women at the time.

However, there was a shift when World War 2 began as men left to go to war and jobs needed to be filled (Women and Work). Portrayals of women became more positive. There was initial resistance towards hiring women to do ‘men’s jobs’ but as advertising grew more women came forward for these jobs. Women in these adverts were presented as strong powerful women, in contrast to pre-World War 2 where they were presented as submissive housewives. This positive shift didn’t last for long however because after the war ended in 1945 advertising stereo types of women returned arguably making women appear more submissive and stereotyped as a ‘sex objects’ (Clay, 2017). This could be due to men returning from winning the war more powerful and confident. Women therefore returning to their old job or to being full time housewives or mothers. This further sexualisation of women only continued on to today.

In today’s advertising industry research has shown that adverts with a female voice over are 3% more effective than men, however a massive two thirds of voice overs are done by men (The Irish Times, 2016). Adverts today highly sexualise women as ‘sex objects’ for the male pleasure, relating to Laura Mulvey’s theory of the Male Gaze, women are presented as passive objects for male pleasure, this is used even when the concept of sex is completely irrelevant to the product being advertised (Sampson, 2015). This is demonstrated clearly in this Tom Ford aftershave advertisement. The women in the room are purely there for the pleasure of the males, by having close ups on the women’s lips and neck’s it creates sexual connotations to attract men in to purchasing the aftershave. By sexualizing women, it draws the attention of men, by placing women in a role where they cannot take control.

Another one of Clay’s stereotypes is the ‘Unobtainable Goddess’, this however isn’t for the pleasure of men, this is used for women to aspire to be what is shown within the advert. This is primarily shown in beauty and fitness adverts. An advert that opposes this is Doves ‘Real Beauty’ campaign showing women as beautiful no matter what their shape size or colour with this really powerful message it creates positive outlook on representations of women.

The final stereotype by Clay is ‘The Bit-Part’ The accompanying role to a male lead this is used often in adverts to show women as less powerful or importance, yet again putting them in a position where they cannot take control.

However, as well as all the negative adverts with stereotypes, there has been many changes in advertising as portrayals of women have become more positive and are beginning to get rid of these female stereotypes. Adverts such as the Nike just do it campaign which makes a mockery of women and how were supposed to act and behave as ‘Ladies.’ Juxtaposing with powerful sporting women aiming to achieve. The Always #LikeaGirl campaign also initially presents women as how they are stereotypes as weak and girly then continues to present women how they really should be, as strong characters instead of sexualized, mothers, house wives or bit parts.

As advertising surrounds us every day and everywhere we go, it is crucial that women are not marginalised into these stereotypes or just placed for the satisfaction of men. Adverts need to be used to empower and promote women on the same level as men in advertising. This does seem to be happening slowly through ads such as Dove, Nike and Always, potentially giving hope for the change of representations of women in advertisements the future.

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YepoegiEQhE

References:

Clay, Lindsey, 2017, 10 from 50 with Lindsey Clay, CEO, Thinkbox , Retrieved from https://www.thinkbox.tv/Creative/Insight/10-from-50-Women-in-advertising

Kemp, Nicola, 2017, Six stereotypes of women in advertising Retrievd from https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/six-stereotypes-women-advertising/1426391

Sampson, Rachael, 2015, Film Theory 101 – Laura Mulvey: The Male Gaze Theory, Retrieved from https://www.filminquiry.com/film-theory-basics-laura-mulvey-male-gaze-theory/

Striking women, Women and Work: Women's work in WW1. Retrieved from http://striking-women.org/module/women-and-work/world-war-i-1914-1918

The Irish Times, 2016, How women are portrayed in advertising Retrieved from https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/how-women-are-portrayed-in-advertising-1.2696448

Clips and images used references:

Always, #LikeaGirl, 2014, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs

Nike, This is us, 2017, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OYi2pbNK_4

Calvin Klein, Meet our women, 2018, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6fe9Q-tRfA

Herbal Essence, Take your hair to #HerbalHairParadise, 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIpGBvwtd6I

Lynx, The Lyxn effect, 2011, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEWo0Fbv-Pc

Kylie Cosmetics, Glosses by Kylie Jenner, 2016, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtoRzI0vKJE

Femfresh, Shower shave cream, 2017, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewir-gKWSN0

Chanel, Coco Mademoiselle, 2011, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRV-2_Un-kk

Tom ford, Tobacco Vanille, 2014, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXYPQDWdQD0

Boss, Man of Today, 2017, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuolDtCniKc

Cadburys, Yes Sir, I WILL boogie in the Office. 2016, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZKPd9yafF4

Boots, Christmas TV advert, 2018, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z6KIlJaACw

Cadburys, Mums Birthday, 2018, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0eEqeizNCA

As/Is, Women Review sexist vintage ads, 2015, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPGIljqjsdE

Scholastic, Beyond the story: American Women During World War II, 2016, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxDdVoiLHcg

Aveeno, Daily Moisturising Lotion Advert with Jennifer Aniston, 2017, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chv_6lH41h0

L’Oreal Ellnett Hairspray Advert Featuring Cheryl Cole, 2014, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2Z38oeltJk

Izzy Abdullah, Times Square NYC Billboards, 2015, Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UfXkoQlX2U