Questions

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

The housewife Image was still common in the 60’s and 70’s even though after the 50’s this image started to decline. This is because this was the Feminist era.

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?

Though this was the feminist era, and woman were demanding more rights, men were still pretty much superior as they still are and women were and are in the subordinate group. The term sexism, started to run through peoples vocabulary and the charm of the woman was the sexuality of her. It was a “Retro-sexism as a social and stylistic”.

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?

I believe there is no complete symbolic annihilation of women in the media however, there is under representation of women in today’s media. The dominant and stereotypical representation of women today is of being the sex object and fulfilling the male needs by sexually satisfying them. Very rarely do we see any form of a positive representation of women. I also strongly agree with Mulvey’s theory that we are looking from the male gaze, as almost all adverts show us how males would represent women in adverts.

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.

Though the slogan is trying to present women in a powerful light, as if their makeup is ‘ammunition’ and has the power to kill, the connotations behind it are still the same as any other advert. It’s trying to say ‘If looks could kill’, as if the only strong aspect of the woman is her Makeup, not even her natural self. It’s also very much a femme fatale philosophy that the woman can seduce a man with ‘deadly’ looks and can kill them too.

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’?

Yes the media is responsible for the responses in the survey. The media portrays a ‘perfect’ image of women, which real women try to achieve. Posters of air brushed models represent what a woman should look like, but no one looks like that in reality, however even knowing that women still try to achieve that look, and when they fail they feel unhappy with the way they look.

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

Recent adverts do also objectify men but not as much as women are in adverts. We have adverts like Lynx where both the men and the women are objectified but it’s always the woman chasing after the man, dominating the male gender and overtly objectifying the female gender.