“[F]eminist thought in the 1960s called attention to the portrayals of women in advertising and promoted systematic investigation into the area of female role stereotypes in popular media. Particularly, it suggested that advertising in popular media has been a primary means for introducing and promoting female role stereotypes and sexism, calling attention for systematic investigation into this area.” (Plakoyiannaki & Zotos, 2009: 1413)
Over the past few decades, numerous studies have been done to examine the way women are portrayed in advertising. Advertising has become part of our daily lives, bombarding us from all sides, whether it be via cellular mobile, television, billboards, newspapers or magazines. With constructed images constantly surrounding the viewer, those images start becoming ‘normal’, due to repetition, and in a sense constructs the way in which the viewer perceives the ‘real’ world. As Pollay says:
“The proliferation and the intrusion of various media into the everyday lives of the citizenry make advertising environmental in nature, persistently encountered, and involuntarily experienced by the entire population. It surrounds us no matter where we turn, intruding into our communication media, our streets and our very homes. It is designed to attract attention, to be readily intelligible, to change attitudes and to command our behaviour” (Pollay, 1986: 18)
He sees the potential for advertising to penetrate our consciousness and alter the modes of thinking is highly likely. Two reasons he offers for this effect of advertising is firstly “that it is pervasive, appearing in many modes and media” and secondly that it is persistent, “reinforcing the same or similar ideas relentlessly” (Pollay, 1986: 21). Advertisements are thus constantly affecting thought processes as well as behaviours and attitudes. Advertisements can thus be seen as a source of information that influences the meanings we ascribe to certain facts. “People construct their knowledge of the world by arranging and simplifying the information they receive. They create cognitive schemes which are able to describe the substance of their perspectives and dramatically impact social cognition” (Yusof et. al, 2014: 2888).
51 One of the themes popularly relayed within advertising is that of gender. Advertising makes use of this theme as it is something that is easily noticed and the information will therefore be processed quickly (Kacen & Nelson, 2002: 292), unfortunately, because of the need for quick understanding/reading, this leads to gender stereotypes being used as shortcuts to and/or proxies for the signals of gendered meaning. According to Wolska, “stereotypes are the most significant type of schemes which are used for orientation in the social environment” (2011, cited by Yusof et.al, 2014: 2888). Goffman concurs:
“gender - femininity and masculinity are in a sense the prototypes of essential expression - something that can be conveyed fleetingly in any social situation and yet something that strikes at the most basic characterization of the individual…expression in the main is not instinctive but socially learned and socially patterned; it is a socially defined category which employs a particular expression, and a socially established schedule which determines when these expressions will occur.” (1979: 7)
If gender is then learned or constructed, and if advertising is one mode of receiving information/cues about gender, it is not surprising that feminists started raising their voices towards the unrealistic representations of women. They believe it contributes to the “reinforcement of gender differences and inequalities” (Gough-Yates, 2003: 7), especially in light of the objectification of women as well as stereotypical portrayals.
3.2.1 Objectification of Women
As stated previously, feminist scholars criticized the advertising industry for portraying women as sexual objects. Advertising companies made use of beautiful, thin, perfectly tanned and toned models to sell products aimed at women but also to portray the ‘standard’ of what femininity is. These women are usually scantily clad, using their bodies or sex appeal to sell the product. As the ‘sexiness’ of the body had nothing to do with the product, most female bodies not even interacting with the product, the bodies of women were thus being objectified. Many advertisements don’t even use the full female body but instead make use of fragmented pieces: chest, face, armpit, legs, arms, hands – making the model seem like less of a person. “To sell their products, advertisers usually focus on portions of women's body rather than the entire body which signifies the view of the fair sex as an object” (Anthony, 2009)
The focus on all these ‘perfect’ bodily parts that together construct the ideal femininity drove women in society to start measuring their own bodies to the standards of the visual simulations seen in advertising and media. Women thus started looking at their own bodies from a third view perspective, inspecting and perfecting – constructing the femininity that is seen to be ‘normal’ and
52 acceptable within a society. “[S]elf-objectification arises once a woman measures her body from a third-person perspective with a focus on their discernible bodily features. It also occurs because advertisements sell images of sexuality, normalcy and popularity more than products” (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). It thus shows how the objectification of women’s bodies in advertising affects the way real women construct their bodies and femininity.
“Advertising discourse both reflects and creates social norms. As one critic points out: the ways in which individuals habitually perceive and conceive their lives and the social world, the alternatives they see as open to them, and the standards they use to judge themselves and others are shaped by advertising, perhaps without their ever being consciously aware of it” (Lippke, 1995: 108)
Objectification of women within advertising thus affects not only the way in which femininity is portrayed but also the way in which the viewer ends up perceiving and exhibiting femininity within themselves and society. It could be said then that these objectified images are influencing the way the viewer sees femininity, “telling women who they are and who they should be” (Kuntjara, 2001). Studies have shown that the objectification of women’s bodies in advertising “not only leads women to have an overall more negative self-body image but also it affects how we view women’s roles in a society” (Yusof, Jelodar & Hamdan, 2014: 2890).
3.2.2 Studies relating to Stereotypical portrayals
As stated previously feminist scholars have found a particular interest in the way women, the body and femininity has been portrayed in various media, particularly advertising as the portrayals they relay, reflect on how the viewer in turn then perceives and exhibits these ideas (women, the female body and femininity) in society. Studies not only focussed on the sexual objectification of women in ads but also on the stereotypical representations that women faced within media and advertising in particular. These studies started in the 1970s and have continued to be of interest to this day.
In the 1970s for instance, Courtney and Lockeretz (1971) studied the representation of women in print which aimed to establish if stereotypes were still prevalent in a time when the roles of women were changing in society. The results of the study indicated that women were “depicted differently to men in regards to levels of occupation; the setting for their portrayals were inside the home” (Kordrostami, 2017: 8); as well as the woman being a decorative element usually associated with domestic products. Courtney and Lockeretz determined four stereotypes.
53 They include: “1) a woman’s place is in the home, 2) women do not make important decisions or do important things, 3) women are dependent and need men’s protection, and 4) men regard women primarily as sexual objects; they are not interested in women as people” (Courtney & Lockeretz, 1971: 94)
In the 1980s Klassen, Jasper, and Schwartz (1993) examined 3,550 print advertisements taken from three different magazines. The advertisements period stretched from 1972 to 1989. The study not only investigated the different ways in which men and women were portrayed but also focused on how the relationship between the two was represented. The study identified three groups, firstly a ‘traditional’ pose (advertisements casting men and women in stereotypical roles), secondly a ‘reverse-sex’ pose (ads that portrayed men and women in exactly the opposite manner of stereotypical expectations) and thirdly, an ‘equality’ pose (advertisements casting men and women in roles/ways neither conflicting or confirming stereotypes) (Kordrostami, 2017: 12). Their results showed that women were depicted in ‘traditional’ roles more often than men and that ““traditional” portrayals of women have been decreasing and equal sex-role portrayals have been increasing since the 1980s” (Kordrostami, 2017: 12).
Another study done in the 1980s by Sullivan and O’Connor (1988), examined trends in female portrayal in print advertisements from the year 1958 to 1983. Their results showed an increase in women being portrayed in more career-orientated roles, “professionals, sales people, or in midlevel management positions” (Kordrostami, 2017: 12) but it also highlighted the increase of women being used in mere decorative roles.
In the early 2000s, Kacen and Nelson (2002) studied the levels of sexism “(defined as stereotypical portrayals of females, such as decorative, as indicating a woman’s place is at home, not career oriented or expert)” (Kordrostami, 2017: 16) in ads ranging from the year 2000-2001. The researchers made use of coding when analyzing the advertisements and rated the ads according to the sexism criteria as follows: a) women who were shown as decoration, b) women placed in the home setting or occupying womanly jobs, c) women having careers but the home being the primary place of importance, d) women and men are equals, and e) women and men as independent individuals. The results showed that sexism and stereotyping still existed in at least four magazines and that the level of sexism had not decreased or improved compared to earlier studies.
54 As can be seen from the studies done from the 1970s to the 2000s, stereotypical depictions of women still exist in advertising. Studies pertaining to the sexual objectification of women have also revealed that though it is less frequent “in general”, it still appears in female representation in advertisements and is “prevalent in many countries around the world” (Grau and Zotos, 2016: 763). The literature provided by feminists investigating the way in which women and femininity have been portrayed during the years, specifically relating to stereotypes and objectification form a foundation when analyzing the advertisements for this particular study. The way in which women are portrayed in jewellery advertisements over the years by De Beers and Tiffany & Co. is be contrasted and compared to the studies done previously, in light of feminist movements, the study examines if a change has taken place in the representations over the years.
As stated before the study makes use of the merging of literature from three fields: gender studies, design studies and communication studies. This chapter has delved into the way gender can be relayed and performed through the use of jewellery which forms part of the design section of the mergence, and gives a brief introduction to gender issues within advertising. Subsequently, literature pertaining to the other two sections, namely gender issues within advertising as well as the construction of gender, is merged with the analysis of the jewellery advertisements of Tiffany & Co. and De Beers in the chapters to follow.
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