Gender, identity and advertising: blog task

Gender, identity and advertising: blog task

Read this extract from Media, Gender and Identity by David Gauntlett. This is another university-level piece of academic writing so it will be challenging - but there are some fascinating ideas here regarding the changing representation of men and women in the media.

1) What examples does Gauntlett provide of the "decline of tradition"? How can we link our advertising CSPs (Score hair cream and Maybelline 'That Boss Life') to this idea?

Gauntlett says that twenty or thirty years ago, analysis of popular media often told researchers that mainstream culture was a backwards-looking force, resistant to social change and trying to push people back into traditional categories. He goes onto saying that nowadays, identity is seen as more fluid and transformable than ever before. This can be linked to the Maybelline 'That Boss Life' because you can clearly see that Manny is gay and nowadays gay people/ the LGBT community is more accepted whereas, back in the 80s/90s it would be against the law to be gay.

2) How does Gauntlett suggest the media influences the way we construct our own identities?

Gauntlett suggegsts the media influences the way we construct our own identities. They do this via Magazines which promote self confidence, information about sex, relationships and lifestyles which can be put to variety of uses. Everything that is shown in the magazine tells the reader, if you can be like this you'll have the perfect relationship, sex life etc. This way the magazine is influencing the reader to be a certain way (Change their identities) in order to have all of this. Furthermore, television programmes, pop songs, adverts, movies and the internet all also provide numerous kinds of 'guidance'.


3) How do the two CSPs reflect the generational differences that Gauntlett discusses? Is it a good thing that the media seems to promote modern liberal values?

In the Score Cream Hair advert, you can clearly see that men were represented as more dominant as the male in the advert was holding the gun and being carried by girls and women are presented as objects and things to keep men happy. In the advert the male character was being carried by females and the females were looking up to the male character which clearly portrays that the female are the vulnerable ones in this case and the male is more superior. 

Surveys have found that people born in the first half of the twentieth century are less tolerant of homosexuality,
and less sympathetic to unmarried couples living together, than their younger counterparts.
Traditional attitudes may be scarce amongst the under-30s, but still thrive in the hearts of some over-65s. We cannot help but notice, of course, that older people are also unlikely to be consumers of magazines.

the mass media has become more liberal, and considerably more challenging to traditional standards, since then, and this has been a reflection of changing attitudes, but also involves the media actively disseminating modern values. It therefore remains to be seen whether the post-traditional young women and men of today will grow up to be the narrow-minded traditionalists of the future. 

4) Why might Manny and Shayla be a good example of the role models that Gauntlett discusses - and also demonstrate how those role models have changed in recent years?

Gauntlett discusses role models as an important concept, although it should not be taken to mean someone that a person wants to copy.Instead, role models serve as navigation points as individuals steer their own personal routes through life. (Their general direction, we should note, however, is more likely to be shaped by parents, friends, teachers, colleagues and other people encountered in everyday life). Manny and Shayla are good examples of role models because they're creating/spreading awareness towards their younger audience and shows them it is okay to open up and its something you shouldn't be ashamed of.

5) Why does the Score hair cream advert provide such a good example of traditional masculinity? How can you link this to Gauntlett's discussion of whether masculinity is in crisis?


The Score hair cream advert provides such a good example of traditional masculinity not being in crisis because clearly the male in the advert is being praised. The advert suggests that people who are using the hair cream will be able to get girls. The male in the advert was surrounded by females and the male was holding a prop which was a gun which suggests that the male has more dominance.

6) Gauntlett consistently argues that masculinity is not in crisis. Can the Maybelline 'That Boss Life' advert be used as evidence of this?

It could be argued that masculinity is in crisis as older generations aren't used to people being openly gay. In the past, being gay was a crime however, now there is a LGBT movement to support those who are gay. For younger generations, this is seen as normal and many celebrities/young people are more comfortable to come out and not be embarrassed about it. 

7) Does advertising still reinforce the "conventionally rugged, super-independent, extra-strong macho man" that Gauntlett discusses? Offer examples for both sides of the argument from the wider advertising industry.

People could argue that yes it still does reinforce toe conventionally  rugged, extra-strong macho man because it is still in popular culture and it still circulates around the internet.
8) Gauntlett discusses the idea of 'girl power' and offers examples from music and film. Does advertising provide evidence to support the idea of 'girl power' or is the industry still reinforcing traditional representations of men and women?

One of the most obvious developments in recent pop culture has been the emergence of the icons and rhetoric of 'girl power', a phrase slapped into mainstream culture by the Spice Girls and subsequently incorporated into the language of government bodies as well as journalists, educationalists, culture critics, and pop fans themselves. Magazines for young women are emphatic in their determination that women must do their own thing, be themselves, and/or be as outrageously sassy and sexy as possible.

9) Do you agree with Gauntlett's argument under 'Popular feminism, women and men' where he suggests that younger generations are not threatened by traditional gender roles and are comfortable with social changes? Does advertising (and our CSPs in particular) provide examples either reinforcing or challenging this idea that younger generations are more comfortable with changing gender roles?

McRobbie further argues that 'This dynamic of generational antagonism has been overlooked by
professional feminists, particularly those in the academy, with the result that the political effectivity
of young women is more or less ignored' (ibid). There is an interesting parallel here with the
scholarship on men and masculinity - the texts on masculinity are largely focused on the difficulties
of middle-aged or older men who find it hard to shake off traditional masculine archetypes. And

perhaps predictably, these studies are apparently written by middle-aged or older men who also cannot help bringing in the older tropes of masculinity.

10) How do the two advertising CSPs show the changing 'diversity of sexualities' that Gauntlett suggests?

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people are still under-represented in much of the
mainstream media, but things are slowly changing. In particular, television is offering prime-time
audiences the chance to 'get to know' nice lesbian and gay characters in soap operas, drama series
and sit-coms (see chapter four). Tolerance of sexual diversity is slowly growing in society (chapter
one), and by bringing into people's homes images of sexual identities which they might not be
familiar with, the media can play a role in making the population more - or less - comfortable with
these ways of living.

11) What examples from advertising does Gauntlett provide for the changing nature of gender in society (from the section on Judith Butler's Gender trouble)?

Judith Butler's manifesto for 'gender trouble' - the idea that the existing notions of sex, gender and sexuality should be challenged by the 'subversive confusion and proliferation' of the categories which we use to understand them. The binary division of 'male' and 'female' identities should be shattered, Butler suggested, and replaced with multiple forms of identity - not a new range of restrictive categories, but an abundance of modes of self-expression. This joyful excess of liberated forms of identity would be a fundamental challenge to the traditional understandings of gender which we largely continue to hold onto today.

12) How can the Maybelline 'That Boss Life' advert be applied to Judith Butler's work on 'gender trouble'? ("The binary division of 'male' and 'female' identities should be shattered, Butler suggested, and replaced with multiple forms of identity...")

Judith Butler suggested and replaced with other forms of identity, not a new range of restrictive categories, but an abundance of modes of self-expression. 

13) How can our two advertising CSPs be used to argue that power has shifted from media institutions to audiences? (Clue: how did Manny and Shayler from the Maybelline advert first become famous?)

Maybelline have intentionally used these two electronic effects, as a result of their broad internet organizing following. Thusly, media associations use these two automated influencers to expose issues decidedly for their thing as they most likely am mindful these two have a tremendous fanbase and along these lines their picture will get apparent, on a progressively broad scale.

14) Why is advertising such a good example of the 'contradictory elements' that Gauntlett discusses with regards to the mass media? In other words, how does advertising continue to both reinforce and challenge gender stereotypes?

We cannot bring this discussion towards a close without noting the inescapable levels of contradiction within popular culture. Although we may occasionally find ourselves saying that 'the mass media suggests' a particular perspective or point of view, the truth is that not only is 'the mass media' wildly diverse, but that even quite specific parts of media culture put out a whole spectrum of messages which cannot be reconciled. It is impossible to say that women's magazines, for example, always carry a particular message, because the enormous range of titles target an equally diverse set of female audiences.

15) Finally, Gauntlett makes a clear case that things change and modern identities are increasingly fluid. How do our advertising CSPs demonstrate the changing attitudes towards gender and sexuality in society?

As we have noted numerous times, things change, and are changing. Media formats and contents change all the time. Audiences change too, albeit more slowly. Views of gender and sexuality, masculinity and femininity, identity and selfhood, are all in slow but steady processes of change and transformation. Even our views of change itself, and the possibilities for personal change and 'growth', have altered over the years.

Advertising and Marketing index

Advertising and Marketing index

1) Advertising: Introduction - narrative in advertising
2) Advertising: persuasive techniques
3) Advertising: the representation of women in advertising
4) Advertising: Score case study and wider reading
5) Advertising: Maybelline case study and wider reading
6) Advertising: Gauntlett - Media, Gender and Identity reading and questions