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The representation of women in advertising

The representation of women in advertising


Mistry suggests that advertising has changed since the mid-1990s. Over recent years, there has been an increase in advertising that includes gender and sexual orientation that is marked as ambiguous. She also suggests that there is an increase in the number of homosexual adverts and images.

A plethora of stereotypes are seen in advertising in the 1940s and 1950s, these stereotypes consist of: 
  • Women are required to stay at home 
  • Its the woman's responsibility to look after the children
  • Its a woman's responsibility to serve men 
Clothes and makeup have a large influence on the representations of women. The accessive amount of makeup along with the minimal and revealing clothing objectifies women. This materialization of women demonstrates women as being a prop or an accessory in the advertising.

 The theory of the 'Male gaze' was created by Laura Mulvey. Mulvey suggests that many ways that media products are made are strategically created for the benefit of men. She also suggested that women are presented for men to look at hence the 'male gaze'. This links to the idea that 'sex sells' and women are represented as sex objects.

 The representation of women changed in the 1970s because there was a rise in the idea of a 'new women.' The term 'new women' focused on the incline of women's social position which helped influenced them to become more independent, confident, assertive.

 Van Zoonen suggests the 'new' representation of women in the 1970's and 1980's were only marginally different from the sexist representations of earlier years. Whilst women were seen as more confident and assertive, they were still seen as a secondary aspect to a males life.

Barthel suggests regarding advertising and male power that 'today's young women can successfully storm the bastions of male power without threatening their male counterparts'. This suggests that women are still not considered as a threat to male power. It also suggests that women will still have the responsibility of taking care of a household to fulfil. 

 Richard Dyer suggests the 'femme fatale' representation of women in adverts such as Christian Dior indicates that women wearing makeup along with dressing up nice is usually doing it to satisfy the taste of a man. The woman will continuously present themselves in that way as they feel liberated and happy to do so.

Media Magazine: Beach Bodies v Real Women (MM54):

 The protein world 'beach bodies'  was an advertisement that featured a young, blonde-haired woman in swimwear with a caption of 'are you beach body ready'. The woman was slim and toned. This reinforces the ideology that women should try to look like the 'acceptable' body type.


This advert was controversial because it is very discriminatory against women that are not built that particular way. It suggests that women have to be slim and perfect to be able to go to the beach and overall accepted. This advert would be detrimental to women's esteem a dhow they feel about themselves. It will also indoctrinate the minds of young girls to make them think that they have to also look like that to be accepted. This resulted in audiences campaigning against it as it offended many women and men 

 This advert suggests to audiences that they have to look a particular way to be accepted. An advertisement that counters this view was the Dove Real Beauty campaign. This advertisement showed a range of women with different sizes, features, race to show people that any type of woman is pure and beautiful. 

Social media gives people the opportunity to comment and share their views about certain things that they see online or in day-to-day life. Social media also helps spread the word of different campaigns and brings engagement to it 

Van Zoonen's feminist theory questioned how women used to be represented in the media and evaluated that women were objectified for the satisfaction of men. Which, related to his view that media establishes gender roles and dominance of patriarchal ideologies. Stuart Hall's theory of ideologies can be applied. Some viewers may understand the producer's intention of the advert, whereas others would believe the producers the intentions for this advert were negative.

 Representations of women since the last 60 years has severely changed. However, we still see slight signs of a negative representation of women, it is more discrete.

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