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In the history and development of advertising
AN analysis paper throw the theory of Male Gaze by Laura Mulvey
In the history and development of advertising
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The Web essay on Male Gaze by the authors Thomas Streeter, Nicole Hintlian, Samantha Chipetz, and Susanna Callender on the University of Vermont website discusses the exploitation of the male gaze in advertising and provides several convincing examples to explain its impact on women. Male Gaze has been a long tradition in western art, where women are represented as objects to be viewed by male viewers. This tradition continues in modern advertising and the omnipresence of this tradition has made it so that "Women watch themselves being looked at" (Berger, 1973, p.47). Through the ages and even in modern times, advertisements assume man as the ideal spectator therefore women are acclimatized to look at themselves through the eyes of a man. I completely agree with the authors that the advertisers understand the power and tradition of the male gaze and exploit it even in modern times, and the primary spectator is the male. …show more content…
A prime example used in the essay that beseeches the idea of male gaze is the WW II-era (1943) ad for soap. The upward and unfocussed glance of the woman is the expression of someone who is not looking at anything, but is actually being looked at by a variety of men. The words in the advertisement “ I pledge myself to guard every bit of Beauty that he cherishes in me” subliminally tells the female viewer to view herself as being looked at by men. The male gaze is even a construct of advertisements that cater to women, as illustrated by the Vogue advertisements in the essay. Women are always subliminally told that they are always on view, and to view themselves through the eyes of a
It’s clear that those advertisements try to make an impact on our buying decisions. We can even say they manipulate viewers by targeting specific group of people or categorizing them so they could have a feeling this product is intended for them or what he or she represents. For instance, they use gender stereotypes. Advertises make use of men and woman appearance or behavior for the sake of making the message memorable. Therefore, most effective and common method is to represent a woman as a sexual object. They are linked with home environment where being a housewife or a mother is a perfect job for the. In other hand men are used more as work done representations. They are associated with power, leadership and efficiency. Those stereotypes make the consumer categorize themselves and reveals the mainstream idea of social status each gender needs to be to fit in and what products they are necessary to have to be part of that
In Susan Bordo’s “Beauty (Re)discover The Male Body, she uses advertisement as a form of her argument on how we observe images through the views of the female and male body in advertisement. Also, the many assumption we come across in Bordo’s argument is how the female and male body is objectified in a sexual content in advertisement that has an effect on how we view the portrayed images. Bordo’s rhetorical strategies were employed effectively throughout her argument. She formatted her essay by the use of ethos and logos, so her reader had a clear understanding on how learning assumption cause portrayal of images. There are a host of different quotes she cites in her work to make it logical, and that her message is being comprehended. For example, “...I knew women legs were supposed to be sexy. I had learned that from all those hose- straightening scenes in movies. But men legs? Who had ever seen a woman gaga over some guy’s leg in the movie?” (Bordo 191). This comes to show that we are taught to think women legs are sexy, and that men legs are not seen as sexy until they started being objectified. We...
Advertising sends gender messages to both men and women. Advertising tells women how they should look and act, and it tells men to expect women to look and act that particular
In this essay I’ll be exploring various concepts of women and will deeply criticise the way women are seen and portrayed through advertising. My primary resource I’ll be referring to throughout this essay is a book called ‘Ways of seeing’ by John Berger, which highlights the role women during the early renaissance and onwards. In addition to this I will explore the various beliefs of women from a wide range of secondary resources, and will include references from books, websites, and various images to help clarify my statements.
Women have been an integral part of society and culture throughout the world for the entirety of its history. This being said, women have not always been held in the brightest and most enabling of lights. With the advent of advertising, women have been portrayed in a variety of degrading tropes that repressed the freedom that many women began to publicly cry out for. The print advertisements of the 1950s have been portrayed as the worst of the offenders in objectifying women as unintelligent beings. Although I do support the thought that the advertisements of the 1950s were bad for putting forward the idea of women’s liberation, the ads of this time also helped to prepare for the second wave of feminism and the sexual revolution. It also promoted a positive look on being a woman, in addition to the negative, that promoted the gathering sense of identification throughout society in being a woman. Thus I am putting forward the additional idea that though the advertisements during this time were not all healthy views on womanhood, there were a great many that helped move women into the next 50 years, and that we could not be where we are today if we had not had the mass exposure of these ads in culture in the 1950s.
In the past few years, advertisement has changed significantly, and with it bringing many changes to our current society. Susan Bordo, a modern feminist philosopher, discussed in her article “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body” how current society has changed starting with Calvin Klein’s advertising campaign that showed men wearing nothing but underwear. Bordo argues how men are becoming the subject of the gaze, just as women were for centuries. This argument of the gaze is especially pronounced in John McTiernan’s film The Thomas Crown Affair, which focuses on two main characters, a man named Thomas Crown, who is a billionaire Manhattan financier, and a woman named Catherine Banning, and insurance investigator who is investigating Crown’s robbery of the 100-million-dollar painting, the “San Giorgio Maggiore Soleil Couchant”. The film addresses Bordo’s modern feminine and masculine gaze to target a wide range of adult audience.
Through the application of physical appearance, audience and text the ad unfortunately paints women in a negative manner. The ad employs tactics that reel society into believing that women must put a man on a pedestal in order to gain his admiration. Women have the right to be treated equally and deserve to be represented in a positive light so the culture can fray away from following beliefs similarly portrayed in this 1930s advertisement. We must teach the next generation that although it is in our nature to nurture those around us, there are no boundaries or restrictions for women to excel in society for the
The documentary Killing Us Softly 4 discusses and examines the role of women in advertisements and the effects of the ads throughout history. The film begins by inspecting a variety of old ads. The speaker, Jean Kilbourne, then discusses and dissects each ad describing the messages of the advertisements and the subliminal meanings they evoke. The commercials from the past and now differ in some respects but they still suggest the same messages. These messages include but are not limited to the following: women are sexual objects, physical appearance is everything, and women are naturally inferior then men. Kilbourne discusses that because individuals are surrounded by media and advertisements everywhere they go, that these messages become real attitudes and mindsets in men and women. Women believe they must achieve a level of beauty similar to models they see in magazines and television commercials. On the other hand, men expect real women to have the same characteristics and look as beautiful as the women pictured in ads. However, even though women may diet and exercise, the reality...
Open up any magazine and you will see the objectification of women. The female body is exploited by advertising, to make money for companies that sell not just a product, but a lifestyle to consumers. Advertisements with scantily clothed women, in sexualized positions, all objectify women in a sexual manner. Headless women, for example, make it easy to see them as only a body by erasing the individuality communicated through faces, eyes, and eye contact. Interchangeability is an advertising theme that reinforces the idea that women, like objects, are replaceable.
The article “Looking at Women” was written by Scott Russell Sanders. This article is about the female are being objectified for wearing a reveals clothing and how she acting inappropriate around men. However, some women that are independent and acts like a proper female should be, she gets more respects from the opposite sex. Sanders noticed that some of the ignorant, bad-mannered men stare at the women in sexual ways and the pursuit of their looks from women. However, Sanders expects women not to take things in the wrong way because the way she dress give the men a wrong impression that she looking for something.
In the essay “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body,” author and philosopher Susan Bordo discusses the history and current state of male representation in advertisements. While using her feminist background, Bordo compares and contrasts the aspects of how men and women are portrayed in the public eye. She claims that there has been a paradigm shift the media with the theory that not just women are being objectified in the public eye, but also men too. Since the mid-1970s, with the introduction of Calvin Klein commercials, men have started to become more dehumanized and regarded as sex symbols. In a similar fashion to how Bordo describes gender, race plays a similar role in the media. People of all different ethnicities and cultures are being categorized into an oversimplified and usually unfair image by the media over basic characteristics.
The portrayals of men in advertising began shifting towards a focus on sexual appeal in the 1980s, which is around the same that women in advertising were making this shift as well. According to Amy-Chinn, advertisements from 1985 conveyed the message that “men no longer just looked, they were also to be looked at” as seen in advertisements with men who were stripped down to their briefs (2). Additionally, advertisements like these were influencing society to view the male body “as an objectified commodity” (Mager and Helgeson 240). This shows how advertisements made an impact on societal views towards gender roles by portraying men as sex objects, similarly to women. By showcasing men and women in little clothing and provocative poses, advertisements influenced society to perceive men and women with more sexual
The ad portrays that if you wear these jeans, you will have women by your side. 2. The second example I found is a hair ad for Pantene. The ad is a picture of a woman with flowing hair with squinted eyes, mouth slightly open, and her finger resting on her bottom lip. This ad could be considered a male gaze type of advertisement because of the “seductive” way the woman in this photo is posing.
Nearly all paintings done through history feature either nude or naked women and have been painted by men for men’s pleasure. All throughout history, women have been surveyed by men and most women have been aware of this, for example John Berger comments on this in his book Ways of seeing: “She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as success in her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another…” This essay forwards as its thesis the concept of the male gaze and the ‘surveyed female’, and how this is illustrated through historical artworks and how they have been challenged by contemporary artists.
The objectification of women is a huge issue in society and is often led by advertising. However, many men still believe that the adverts depicting women in a sexual and often passive posture are not very offensive, but rather very funny or sexy. However, how would they feel if it were their daughter or sister being advertised throughout the world as a sexual object? The Tiger Beer advertisement shown in the appendix is a clear example of the objectification of women in advertising. The Tiger Beer advert was made to appeal to men from the age of 20 to 60.