Ruby essay final

To What Extent Does Advertising Construct our Ideas and Expectations of the Female form?

Ruby Shelton BA (Hons) Illustration – level 4 Module title: Context of Practice Module code: OUIL401 Assignment: Studio Brief 1 - Critical Analysis Context & Chronologies Word Count: 2758

This paper will be arguing to what extent does advertising construct our ideas on gender with a heavy focus on expectations of the female form. It will discuss how women are presented in adverts regarding weight loss products, food, perfume and cars whilst evaluating what effects these depictions have on how the female form is viewed and expected to be. It will also discuss how advertisement campaigns are celebrating diversity within the female form and evaluating whether this is helping form more open minded social opinions on female body image. Further to this, this paper will also look at how males are also subject to social expectations regarding their appearance and whether this effects societies ideas on gender.

It could be argued that advertisements construct several expectations surrounding the female form and can depict social ideas on what is and is not attractive. An example of this happening is through the presentation of height, especially in regards to females. Often, petite women are shown to be more attractive than taller females and this is regularly in reference to an accompanied male. For example, females whom are smaller than males are depicted as cute, however females that are taller than the males are often depicted as masculine or unattractive. In the book ‘Gender Advertisements’ Erving Goffman (1979, pg28) talks about the theory of ‘Relative Size’, explaining that ‘between the sexes, biological dimorphism underlies the probability that the male’s usual superiority of status over the female will be expressible in his greater girth and height.’ From this, it could be understood that males find smaller women more attractive because they do not compromise their superiority. Advertisements can use this tactic for sales if

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associating a product with the desirability of power. However, this shapes the idea that petite women are pleasing and women with a taller frame are unattractive. For example looking at the

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Volkswagen Up television

advertisement (2013) we watch a tall woman going on several blind dates.

When the male realises she is taller than him they each appear to be disappointed and not attracted to her due to her height. We can see this from their facial expressions changing from a smile to an apprehensive look as they greet her. At the end of the advert she meets a tall man driving a Volkswagen Up car that is in fact taller than her, she is pleasantly surprised by his height seeing as the car seems small and therefore promotes the unexpected spacious design of the Volkswagen Up model. However, the general tone of the advert does communicate a social consensus that taller women are undesirable and can formulate the belief that women who are larger than average height are less pretty.

The theory of relative size is supported further by the example of the Dolce and Gabbana advertisement for the perfume entitled 2 ‘Light Blue’ (2013.) In the editorial advert, a petite woman in a bikini is exhibited whilst a tall, muscular and attractive male embraces her. The body language of the male appears to be very strong and possessive over the female and therefore communicates the idea that she is physically pleasing to him, arguably in a sexual manor due to the lack of clothing and touching of bodies. This formula of visual communication is very common within fragrance advertising as it associates the product with a sexy body type therefore making the buyer

1 See figure 1 in appendix 2 See figure 2 in appendix

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attractive as well. However, the presentation of this sexy female could be argued to generate the opinion that petite-framed women are desirable to males. This induces several body confidence issues and can stem to females not wearing or acting the way they would prefer.

Another way in which advertising depicts expectations on the female form is through bodily weight and fat. As presented in the perfume advert from Dolce and Gabbana, not only is a petite frame attractive but also slim figures with little body fat are desirable. The increased number of adverts presenting skinny female bodies as attractive has also had an increased effect on weight loss products (Kilbourne 1994.) This has also meant an increased number of advertisements putting pressure on females to lose weight and to buy these products. Kilbourne argues in ‘Still Killing Us Softly: Advertising and the Obsession with Thinness’ that ‘the magazines and the ads create and intensify anxiety about weight because it is so profitable.’ This meaning that it is within the interest of magazines and weight loss products to capitalise on thinness and its perceived relation with beauty because it scares women to purchase products in order to change their body image to be considered socially attractive. For example, Protein World launched an advertisement campaign for their ‘weight loss collection’ (2015). It asks the public 3‘Are You Beach Body Ready?’ whist displaying a very thin, toned and pretty woman stood in a bikini. Her confident stance implies her figure is the acceptable visual representation of ‘beach body ready,’ however it can be argued that this image is not a fair representation of the female form due to digital editing,

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much like a great deal of editorial advertisements. Nevertheless, it creates the perception that her slim form is the epitome of beauty and ultimately is the acceptable body type to be seen by others at the beach. It could be argued that the advert causes females to question their bodily form and scares women who feel insufficiently attractive in comparison to the model to buy the product and avoid presenting a bad-looking body.

Food dieting products also use these scare tactics to sell, however often offer alternatives to unhealthy foods, putting a positive spin on weightloss and therefore making products more accessible and likely to sell. An example of this is the television advert for 4Kellogg’s Special K Mini Breaks (2009.) This presents a female in an office environment being offered snacks by colleagues, such as crisps and pastries, to which she refuses. Whilst the woman makes her decision on whether to accept these offers she pictures the colleagues turning in to evil characters such as the devil and a witch. After refusing these ‘temptations’ the female opts for a bag of Special K Mini Breaks as a healthier alternative that are pleasantly described to contain ‘just 90 calories.’ The addressing of ‘ladies’ by the narrator when talking about the product, accompanied by a female main character, specifically aims certain ideas surrounding weight loss and body image this advert implies towards females alone. Agreeably the snacks presented have been proven as unhealthy if consumed daily, nonetheless the visualisation of the evil character in association to these foods gives the impression that women should never allow themselves to eat certain foods as a treat. However, the

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main pressure that is being communicated in this advert is that women must watch their daily calorie intake, and therefore dictates expectations of female attitudes towards food and weight loss.

Further to this, weight loss products are also a contributing factor to the constraints advertisements put on women regarding social ideals of thinness.

Often adverts encouraging sales of products completely separate from body image still utilise thin models making this an expectation of all women as they are seen in normal circumstances. The Audi SQ5 5 ‘Style or Substance’ television advert is a perfect example of this. The advert is selling a product that has no connection to the female body however chooses to feature a very slender woman walking down a pavement wearing a sophisticated and possibly expensive outfit. As she walks her outfit starts to fall apart at the seams whilst her bag and shoes break making her fall. A narrator then says ‘style or substance? We believe you can have both’ as the Audi SQ5 model drives away in the background implying that the car is fashionably designed but also reliable. However, it also conveys the opinion that in order to be considered stylish and beautiful; a woman must be tall, slender and well groomed such as the model in the advert. The placement of thin models in adverts for products that have no connection to weight or bodily appearance depicts thinness as the normality or status quo. This idea is heavily supported in the research found in ‘The Elastic Body Image: The Effect of Television Advertising and Programming on Body Image Distortions in Young Women’ (Philip, N., Myers, Jr., Frank, A. 2006.) It suggests that young females

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watching just thirty minutes of television and advertisements affects their bodily perception, causing ‘lowered body size over-estimations and subjects’ depression levels.’ It also suggests that the negative effects of television and advertisements indirectly have caused an increase in anorexia nervosa and bulimia.

On the contrary, there are several advertisement campaigns that celebrate different body types and encourage modern social views on beauty to be more open minded in regards to several factors including weight, height and race. An example of a campaign that provides the encouragement of all women in the United Kingdom to be active, disregarding body shape, size or ability is the 6 ‘This Girl Can’ campaign founded by Sport England and supported by the UK Government. The campaign consists of several posters displaying photographs of a diverse group of women taking part in a variety of individual and team sports accompanied by captioned insights to their experiences, as well as a TV advertisement film. An example of how this campaign presents the female form without constructing expectations on appearance is with the poster that shows a wet female in a swimming costume leaving a pool accompanied by the caption ‘I swim because I love my body. Not because I hate it.’ Firstly, the framing of the photograph focuses on the females face and not on her body with some contextualisation of the exercise she has taken part in. Therefore, it could be argued that the female is represented as a human being and not as a sexualised object, which is often seen in advertisements containing women in swimsuits like the example from

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Dolce and Gabbana. Secondly, the caption puts forward the opinion that she is proud of her body and therefore exercises to remain healthy as opposed to exercising to lose weight. Because this opinion is being broadcasted in a confident, matter of fact manner it encourages viewers to embrace the natural female form as beautiful rather than something to be improved. Therefore, it constructs no expectations of the female form but celebrates diversity in women’s body image. Janet Hansson’s visual analysis of this campaign entitled ‘This Girl Can- A Visual Reading’ supports the idea that the campaign presents females in an equal and diverse way with the statement ‘representations of women’s bodies have suggested that a dichotomy of the thin versus the obese body is found within society, this campaign can be argued as providing the in-between’ (2015, pg25.) From this it can be seen that she believes the campaign displays a fairly true array of female body types if compared to the UKs current average dress size.

As well as advertisement campaigns encouraging open-minded views towards female body image, we also see examples of males in advertising that create social expectations regarding their appearance. This argues that the extent of social expectation on form presented through advertising is not just applicable to females. According to Richard Elliott and Christine Elliot ‘men felt that the representation of idealized male images in advertising had an adverse effect o their self-image and self-esteem’ (2005) which directly links to evidence found in ‘The Elastic body’ (Philip, N., Myers, Jr., Frank, A. 2006) where young females had similar effects on their bodily perception after

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viewing advertisements. An example of this would be the 7Coca Cola; Diet Coke Gardener TV advertisement (2013) where a group of women sat in a park drinking cans of the product roll a can towards a young male gardener mowing the grass. The can hits the mower and is shaken up by the engine making the can spray the male when he opens the drink. In response to this the man takes off his wet top to reveal a hair free and muscled torso to which the women are pleased to see. However, like the advertisements of the females discussed previously, his body image is not representational of the average male. The pleasant reaction of the females showing excited and aroused facial expressions such as licking of the lips communicates sexual desire and therefore puts pressures on males to look this way to be considered visually pleasing. Though in many ways this advert has worse connotations due to the song choice that accompanies the advert entitled ‘I Just Want to Make Love to You’ by Etta James which connotes males to be only worthy of manual work and presents them as sex objects. Therefore, the pressures put on females’ and males’ bodily appearances are very similar if not equal in weight arguing that advertising does construct our ideas on the female form. However, the same is applicable to both genders and arguably acceptable to be more extreme when using males as subjects.

Equally it could be argued that males are not analysed under so many different contexts to be depicted as attractive. Men are often only evaluated against levels of muscularity and weight to be perceived as attractive.

However, women can be analysed against several different factors including

7 See figure 7 in appendix

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hair, make-up, height, weight, complexion, and body hair. An example to capitalise on this argument is the Dove 8‘Beautiful Underarms’ campaign. The editorial poster presents a woman wearing a strappy top with her armpits on show displaying hairless underarms. The text to accompany this image reads ‘Dove presents the latest thing to wear with your first date, built in second date guarantee top… beautiful underarms.’ The advert is encouraging sales of the brands roll-on deodorant that promises ‘noticeably soft smooth underarms’ and to calm irritable skin after shaving. This advert establishes the idea that females can only be considered for a date and consequently considered to be attractive if her underarms are hair free and not irritated by the process of shaving to become free of underarm hair. It also depicts the idea that women should wear strappy or revealing tops that show off their underarms and other parts of their upper bodies to be viewed as eligible for dating. A recent study, which enrolled 129 female university students, showed that 92% of subjects remove their leg and or underarm hair (M. Tiggemann, and S.J. Kenyon, 1998). ‘The reasons cited for hair removal were primarily concerned with a desire for femininity and attractiveness’, despite the majority of students involved to have pro feminist beliefs. This evidence clearly shows that females feel heavily pressured in to removing body hair in order to be perceived as attractive that they will even go against feminine beliefs as a result of media, advertising and modern popular culture.

Overall, it can be argued that women are dramatically affected by the presentation of the ideal female body images within advertisements

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campaigns. This is evident in findings which women can form lowered opinions of their self-image after viewing body ideals, especially in regard to thinness, within contemporary advertisements (Philip, N., Myers, Jr., Frank, A. 2006.) However, it is also evident that men receive a similar treatment in affiliation to depicted body images in advertising and also suffer from selfesteem issues due to this inaccurate display. Men can also receive a more extreme version of their forms being represented in a sexual context, nevertheless adverts presenting the male form in general appear to be less common than that of females. On the other hand, women are evaluated and compared against many more body issues than males such as whether or not a woman has body hair or if she is too tall. It could be argued that males are only judged against muscularity and attractiveness due to advertisement displays. However, on the contrary to this it is also evident that contemporary advertisement campaigns are encouraging associations between beauty and varied body shapes for women such as the ‘This Girl Can’ campaign.

Consequently, it could be conceived advertising does construct ideas and expectations of the female form to quite a large extent. Nonetheless this does not mean that healthier attitudes towards the female body are being discouraged through contemporary advertisement campaigns.

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Appendix

Figure 1 - Volkswagen ‘Up’ Television Advertisement screenshot (2013)

Figure 2 - Dolce & Gabbana ‘Light Blue’ Perfume Advertisement (2013)

Figure 3 - Protein World ‘Beach Body Ready?’ Advertisement (2015)

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Figure 4 - Kellogg’s Special K Mini Breaks (2009.

Figure 5 - Audi SQ5 ‘Style or Substance’

Figure 6 - Sport England – ‘This Girl Can’

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Figure 7 - Coca Cola; Diet Coke Gardener TV advertisement (2013)

Figure 8 - Dove – ‘Beautiful Underarms’

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WEBSITES 1. This Girl Can. 2016. This Girl Can. [Online] Available at: http://www.thisgirlcan.co.uk (Accessed 04 April 2016) ONLINE JOURNALS 1. 1998, ‘The Hairlessness Norm: The Removal Of Body Hair In Women’ Sex Roles, Volume 39, Issue 11 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1018828722102#page1 (Accessed 2 March 2016) 2. 2005,’ Idealized images of the male body in advertising: a reader-response exploration’, Journal Of Marketing Communications, Volume 11, Issue 1 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1352726042000263566?journalCode=rj mc20 (Accessed 2 March 2016) 3. 2006, ‘The Elastic Body Image: the Effect of Television Advertising and Programming on Body Image Distortions in Young Women’, Journal of Communication, Volume 42, Issue 3, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.14602466.1992.tb00802.x/abstract;jsessionid=502975254736073547085EC4A6299BB0.f 01t01 (Accessed 2 March 2016) 4. 2015, ‘This Girl Can- A Visual Reading’ Hansson, J. http://scholar.googleusercontent.com/scholar?q=cache:Ca8sBPuQ7yIJ:scholar.googl e.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5 (Accessed 24 April 2016) ONLINE IMAGES & VIDEOS 1. Audi SQ5 TV Advertisement, YouTube, UK, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzUnKE0JI1c (Accessed 04 April 2016) 2. Beach Body Ready? Campaign 2015, PlusModel, US, http://www.plus-modelmag.com/2015/04/controversial-beach-body-ready-campaign-sparks-debate-bodypositive-responses-including-one-featuring-ashley-graham/ (Accessed 16 February 2016) 3. Coca Cola- Diet Coke Gardener Advertisement, YouTube, UK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwYCvTpYMCA (Accessed 06 April 2016) 4. Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue Advert, GLAMCHECK, US, http://www.glamcheck.com/fashion/2010/07/13/dolce-gabbana-light-blue-fragrancecampaign/ (Accessed 8 February 2016) 5. Dove Beautiful Underarms Advertisement, Adforum, UK http://c0248141.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/OGIM_04028_6701461A.JPG 6. Kellogg’s Special K Mini Breaks Advert, YouTube, UK, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5flTrVFFOs (Accessed 04 April 2016) 7. Müllerlight Goodies, YouTube, UK, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOQvdDFLpDk (Accessed 04 April 2016)

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8. Sport England – ‘This Girl Can’ advertisement, Huffington Post, UK http://i.huffpost.com/gen/2480826/thumbs/o-THIS-GIRL-CAN-facebook.jpg (Accessed 04 April 2016) 9. Sport England – ‘This Girl Can’ advertisement, YouTube, UK ’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toH4GcPQXpc (Accessed 04 April 2016) 10. Volkswagen Up Advert 2013, TellyAds, UK, http://www.tellyads.com/play_advert/?filename=TA16524&type=recent (Accessed 10 February 2016) MUSIC 1. Etta James, ‘I Just Want To Make Love To You’, At Last! Argo Records (LP 4003)

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