Stereotypes of Men in Advertisements

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Recommended: Advertising and gender

Stereotypes of Men in Advertisements

Visual representation of reality, as seen through mass media, is acknowledged by sociologists to be influential in shaping people's views of the world. Our everyday realities are articulated mostly by what we see in the media. The role of advertising in this interpretation of reality is crucial. The target audience's self-identification with the images being a basic prerequisite for an advertisement's effectiveness, makes advertising one of the most important factors in the building of behavior models and values systems. The way a certain notion is managed at a visual level determines how people will perceive this notion and whether they will identify with it or not. Meaning is encoded in the structure of the images, which thus become potent cultural symbols for human behavior. The framing and composition of the image, the setting, the symbolic attributes and every other element in its structure, all are engaged in the effective presentation of the underlying notion.

What do images of the male body in advertising reveal about the notion of masculinity today? What is today's model man? Is there consistency in the visual representation of masculinity or are there competing images of it?

In this study I will do a content analysis of the portrayal of men in 20 magazine advertisements. 5 ads were taken from "Maxim," a men's magazine targeted at 20 to 30 something males. 4 were taken from "Men's Journal, a men's magazine targeted at men from 30 to retirement age. 5 were looked at from Harper's "Bazaar," a women's magazine targeted at adult women. 4 were taken from "Allure," a women's magazine targeted at women in their 20's and 30's, and two were taken from "Entertainment Weekly," an entertainme...

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...to a woman.

Bibliography:

Works Cited

Fejes F(1992) Masculinity as fact :A review of empirical mass communication research on masculinity, S Craig (ed), Men, masculinity and the media Newbury Park 9-22

Saco D (1992) Masculinity as signs: Post-structuralist feminist approaches to the study of gender S Craig (ed) Men, masculinity and the media Newbury Park 22-39

Wernick A. (1987) From Voyer to Narcissist: Imaging men in contemporary advertising, Toronto University Press 277-279

Foucault M The history of sexuality ,volume 2 , Pantheon(1978)

Foucault M Discipline and punish . Penguin books

Kimmel, M. (1987) (editor) Changing Men: New Directions in Research on Men and Masculinity. London: Sage.

Millum, T. (1975) Images of Women: Advertising in Women's Magazines. London: Chatto.

Morgan, D. (1992) Discovering Men. London

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