1 Visual Analysis

Visual Analysis Assignment Guidelines

In today’s information age we are bombarded with visual images relating all kinds of messages. Advertisers, entertainment groups, media corporations, advocacy groups, the government, and others create visual messages to make a point, to sell a product, and/or to illuminate an issue. Analyzing these images allows us to develop our critical thinking and analytical skills as well as enhance our media literacy, which is our ability to understand the ideas and implications of the various forms of media in our culture.

For this assignment, you will adopt the role of an image analyst for a large media outlet. Your job is to write a 1000-1200 word memo in which you analyze one client’s visual message in order to answer the question: “How do the design features of this image challenge or complicate gender expectations?”

The selection of your visual image will be an important step for this process, so your instructor will likely provide you with 3-4 from which to choose. Many visuals present images that support social expectations of gender, so the visuals you’re provided will work against social expectations or present a more complicated message than the stereotypes. They will also be contemporary American visuals, ones that were created within the last five years or so. Finally, they’ll be static (not moving) images.

Once you have chosen your visual, you’ll need to develop your analysis effectively. This will require careful explanation of the meaningful connections that you identify between the visual’s design features and how they complicate or challenge gender expectations. Your memo needs to briefly but clearly describe the relevant design features, but, more importantly, explain how they challenge or complicate gender expectations. To help you make these connections and to develop your analysis, you must also use at least one outside source (from this textbook or from outside research). However, the source should be in support of your analysis of the image.

To demonstrate above average analytical skills and your critical engagement with course concepts, your memo should present ideas that are generally overlooked by the more casual viewer and should guide your audience to engaging with the visual in a new way. In other words, your analysis needs to move beyond the obvious.

Rationale

The visual analysis assignment meets all of the English 100 objectives, but, more specifically, it works to help students learn to better “analyze and respond to a wide range of texts such as advertisements, websites, informative essays, editorials, and speeches.” It is also important because it asks you to meet one of the most significant objectives in English 100: to “demonstrate critical thinking when examining and analyzing human difference.” In order to fulfill these particular objectives, you will:

• Analyze how authors and designers represent human
• Identify how culture and society impact the ways human beings are
• Analyze how human difference is represented in a visual

Analysis & Media Literacy

 The central purpose of this chapter’s writing assignment is to analyze a visual image. To analyze something means to break it down into its different components in order to understand how it works. People analyze things all the time, though we may not always call it analysis or think deeply about what we’re doing. For instance, when we taste a new food, we talk about its texture and flavor; we even try to identify the various ingredients we think we detect. By breaking down the food into categories of texture and flavor, we begin the analysis process. By dividing flavor into subcategories of ingredients, we analyze even further. We are familiar with another common use of analysis by watching TV crime dramas. In these shows, crime scene investigators collect evidence, including unidentified trace evidence, such as powders or fluids. This evidence is taken back to a lab to be processed and analyzed. The lab produces an analysis report that identifies the various components of the trace evidence that, undoubtedly, allows the detectives to determine what the unidentified substance is and solve the case. Studying the various parts of—or analyzing—an object, then, allows us to learn more about the whole object. Analytical processes are used in a variety of fields. As in our TV example, analysis is used in the Sciences, but it is also used in the Humanities. Literature is analyzed; so is artwork, like paintings or sculptures. In fact, the ability to analyze can be applied in almost any career.

For example, analysis is an important aspect of advertising. Students who take marketing and advertising classes and people who work in ad agencies regularly participate in an analytical process called critique, or crit, for short. In her book, AD Critique, Nancy R. Tag explains that critique is the process by which “one deconstructs an ad in order to understand it and construct something better. […] Critique pulls the work apart, examines it, and determines if the elements make sense and if the whole comes together” (5). This analytical process is an integral part of creating advertisements. Once an ad has been designed and drafted, a group of people gather for the critique. They break down the design features of the ad, discussing how it works to create the intended messages. These discussions often highlight what’s successful in the ad as well as what aspects need revision before a final version of the ad is completed. All ads, then, have been carefully constructed; all of an ad’s design features have been specifically selected and arranged to send a particular message to the viewer.

Advertisers design messages using a variety of media formats that are a part of our everyday lives: TV commercials, Internet and magazine ads, billboards, and posters, just to name a few. Often, the central message is quite clear, but sometimes messages are less overt. For instance, ads that sell diet products often use pictures labeled “before” and “after” in an attempt to demonstrate that the product was responsible for the apparent weight loss between the two images. This central claim—our product will help you lose weight—is obvious. However, this ad also suggests that viewers need to lose weight, and that the person in the “before” picture is unacceptable, while the person in the “after” photo is more desirable.

Even though the ad’s message about the general importance of weight loss isn’t the main purpose or meaning, it still has an impact on people’s body image, as well as on our social expectations of others. Being able to analyze all messages inherent in advertising, then, is one way to understand how our social systems are created, perpetuated, and even challenged.

Processing messages in advertisements and understanding what they mean to our lives is also one way of enhancing your media literacy. The National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) defines media literacy as “[t]he ability to ACCESS, ANALYZE, EVALUATE, and COMMUNICATE information in a variety of forms.”^[1] Just as advertisers use analysis to create more effective ads, viewers can analyze media messages to better understand their purpose and value; media literacy also allows us to see how those messages can impact our lives. For example, you may have received an official-looking email in your university inbox that informs you of a problem with your university ID. The email says that, to fix the problem, you should reply with your password or go to a specific website. To understand that this email is NOT official—that it is actually a scam to gain access to your account or to infect your computer with a virus—you have to use your media literacy skills. If you don’t analyze the email carefully to evaluate its authenticity, you could put yourself at risk for identity theft or other crimes.

This chapter’s major writing assignment asks you to closely analyze an example of visual media. In doing so, you will develop your analytical skills and your media literacy, making you less vulnerable to harmful or false media, but also more socially aware of the implications of the various messages present in media today.

Sex, Gender, and Social Systems

As a culture, we are deeply invested in assumptions about sex and gender. For example, even before a baby is born, many of us participate in traditions and functions that revolve around knowing a fetus’s sex: purchasing clothes and toys in gendered colors (pink for girls and blue for boys), elaborate “gender reveal” parties, and even inviting family members to the 20-week ultrasound when the baby’s external sex organs are first discernible. As you’ll see in the discussion below, despite how invested these traditions are in (binary understandings of) sex and gender, they often confuse those two terms. As a reminder, the Visual Analysis Memo is not asking you to express your opinion about sex and gender, but in order to understand how a visual challenges or complicates gender expectations, you will need to understand those traditional gender expectations. Additionally, while definitions can be limiting and often change over time, understanding common terminology can give us the shared language we will need to begin conversations about complex cultural topics.

Sex 

A person’s sex is often defined by reproductive functions, presuming a biologically-based binary in which people are considered either male or female. It also suggests that we can group people into these two categories by examining their bodies, more specifically their reproductive organs.

In its most simple definition, then, our culture asserts that those who have a penis are men, and those who have a vagina are women.
While U.S. culture traditionally limits the possibilities for a person’s sex to two categories (male/female), reality is not that simple; in fact, even biology is not that simple. While we have been conditioned to expect a child to be either male or female, the human body is not always easily categorized into just these two groups. Instead of thinking of sex as a dichotomy of male and female, our biological reality is more like a spectrum, with males and females who have clearly defined reproductive organs—and corresponding chromosomes and hormone levels—at each end of the spectrum, and various combinations of those biological features fitting somewhere in between. For example, a person can have what are considered female reproductive organs but XY (male) chromosomes. As most of us have never had a formal chromosomal analysis, we likely don’t know for sure if our “chromosomal sex” aligns with our “physical sex.” In this way, even “biological sex” is more of a social construction than we might have been led to believe.

Gender 

Just as sex isn’t really a binary, neither is gender; yet, in the U.S., we often associate certain behavioral and physical traits with males and females based on a cultural understanding of what we expect of men and women. Gender, then, refers to the system of cultural expectations we associate with different sexes. Much of society expects people to perform distinct masculine and feminine gender roles from the moment the ultrasound technician or the gender-reveal cake tells us a child’s presumed sex. Baby boys, for example, are generally considered little MVPs while baby girls are little princesses, and we see these assumptions in baby clothing, decorations for nurseries, and even how friends and family talk to and about baby boys or baby girls. As they grow older, our culture teaches boys to be stoic, adventurous, and physically strong while girls are taught to be more emotional, careful, and pretty. Whether you believe that these traits are innate (biological) or socially constructed – or a bit of both – it’s easy to see how these expectations are transmitted and reinforced through various means: adults, other children, cultural traditions, television, print media, and toys, to name just a few.

In his book Transgender 101,^[2] Nicholas M. Teich calls these external performances of gender gender expression. Such social expectations of gender change over time, of course, but they’re also rarely as monolithic as we might imagine. In our own experiences, we probably recognize that we don’t meet all gender expectations all of the time. Not all men are physically powerful, emotionally stoic, and stalwart protectors of the more vulnerable. Similarly, not all women are emotionally open or feel a biological clock counting down the days to motherhood. (And not all people identify as men or women.) These and other expectations for men and women are created and reinforced by much of our society, but, just like our biological sex, our individual genders are more complex than our cultural system. And, of course, many of these gendered expressions and expectations are specific to social and cultural groups. For instance, in other countries, men often cross their legs at the ankle or thigh in what an American might consider a feminine way. Even within this country, gender expectations can vary based on race and ethnicity, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, gender identity (whether someone is cisgender, transgender, or nonbinary, for example), and even geographic location. Because these expressions of gender differ from cultural group to cultural group, we can see the ways that they are socially constructed.

Despite the fact that much of our society expects people to perform one consistent gender, in reality, gender is much more complicated than many of our social systems reflect or allow. Rather than thinking of gender expressions in terms of either men or women, we can think of gender on a spectrum, just like we did with sex. On the gender spectrum, we can put traditionally masculine traits on one end and traditionally feminine traits on the other end. In between, are all of the various combinations of masculine and feminine traits—as well as nonbinary traits—that people use to express their gender. Women can be driven and competitive and, at the same time, nurturing; men can be both emotionally vulnerable and athletic; and, of course, people can choose to play with gender, expressing aspects of femininity one day and masculinity the next, blending gender performances on any given day, or choosing more nonbinary forms of expression.

While we all perform our gender in multiple and often shifting ways, larger social systems continue to prescribe a pretty narrow view of gender expression. For example, a young girl who likes to play football or get dirty is often called a “tomboy,” suggesting she somehow no longer fits the category of “girl,” even though that’s her gender identity. Similarly, when young boys cry or enjoy playing with dolls, they’re often chided for being “girly” (and we might ask ourselves why this is considered such an insult, when being a “tomboy” doesn’t carry quite the same sting). The boy, too, is excluded from the socially acceptable label of “boy” until he learns to hold his feelings back and demonstrate more traditionally masculine behavior. The social pressures to conform to narrow gender expectations are powerful, as are the social pressures to reflect gender binaries rather than gender spectrums. These pressures can make it very difficult to express the many facets of ourselves, but while social expectations are powerful, that doesn’t mean that they’re not changeable. It’s important to understand them, though, in order to decide how (and if) you want to challenge them. It’s also important to understand them  in order to analyze how your visual challenges or complicates gender expectations.

Activity: Practicing Analysis

We use visual images to communicate every day. Often, these visual messages are so familiar that we don’t take the time to consider what other implicit ideas are part of the message. To help illustrate how everyday images communicate messages about gender, let’s examine two different school crossing road signs.

1. How are the figures in Sign A gendered? What is the relationship between the two figures? What does this relationship suggest about gender? Do these gender messages compliment, contradict, or complicate American social expectations/stereotypes?
2. How are the figures in Sign B gendered? What is the relationship between the two figures? What does this relationship suggest about gender? Do these gender messages compliment, contradict, or complicate American social expectations/stereotypes?
3. Compare/contrast the two signs. How are their designs similar? How are they different? How do they communicate similar messages? How do they communicate different messages?
4. What other signs/images do you see every day that present ideas about gender? Do their gender messages compliment, contradict, or complicate social expectations/stereotypes?

 

Representations of Masculinity and Femininity in Advertisements

Edward Timke and William M. O’Barr

1.  Introduction

We live in a brave, new, gender-fluid world. Or at least this is what an Adweek article wants readers to think when it declared that advertising has entered “Ungendered” territory.¹ In summarizing the advertising industry’s evolving understanding of gender, Adweek argues that retail advertisers have become sensitive to gender identifications beyond a male-female binary. The publication claims many advertisements, especially for beauty and fashion products, are using androgynous (gender-neutral) images to appeal to many audiences and gender identifications at the same time.

Why is gender ambiguity such important news when studying masculinity and femininity in advertisements? When answering this question, society’s and the advertising industry’s changing understanding of gender is revealed. As Adweek emphasizes, in the new millennium, “we are in the midst of a ‘tectonic shift’” in gender norms that is hard to untangle because more individuals no longer ascribe to clear identifications as male and female, and there are many varieties of masculinity and femininity.³ Summarized aptly by Ruth Bernstein, a New York-based advertiser: “As androgyny and gender fluidity become the norm rather than the exception in today’s cultural landscape, brands are faced with the challenge of tackling gender norms both in their advertising and the products they offer.”^[3]

This unit of ADText compares representations of gender in American advertisements from 2016 to advertisements from 2006 The 2006 advertisements were analyzed in a previous version of this unit. Both surveys examine ads in various magazines available at newsstands in May and June of their respective years. Although a summary of the 2006 survey is provided below, the original report (http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.library.tamu.edu/article/202979) should be read to understand how masculinity and femininity have been treated differently and similarly since then.

So why is there now so much concern among advertisers about gender fluidity? What is so challenging about changing definitions of gender beyond the male-female binary? One immediate answer to these questions comes from deeply rooted misunderstandings about the relationship between biological sex and gender identity.

Historically, gender identification has been conceived of as the same as biological sex (i.e. one’s sex organs).⁶ However, over time, especially from the 1960s to the present, the equation of sex with gender has been challenged by advances in women’s rights, gay rights, and studies of gender and sexuality.⁷ Among many academic and activist circles, it has become accepted that gender is a socially constructed category that requires serious questioning. From this view, social and cultural institutions—such as family, friends, schools, religion, government, and mass media—have defined the expectations and norms that come with being male or female in a given cultural context.

Further, gender can be seen as a sort of performance that we all make and negotiate within larger cultural and societal norms.⁸ Many individuals feel like they conform easily to dominant cultural expectations of gender, which are often reinforced in advertising messages, and various forms of media. However, others feel that they do not align with society’s and advertising’s dominant gender expectations, so they may play along with what society expects of them, or they go their own road.

There are four terms related to sex and gender that make it possible to develop richer understandings of advertisements’ messages about masculinity and femininity: gender identity, sexual orientation, biological sex, and gender expression. Gender identity refers to how one sees oneself on a continuum: from woman to man (or an identity in between). Biological sex describes one’s physical sexual anatomy. Gender expression involves how one prefers to present one’s gender: from feminine to masculine, or an expression in between (androgynous). Sexual orientation refers to one’s sexual preferences in a partner: heterosexual (preferring someone of the opposite sex), homosexual (preferring someone of the same sex), bisexual (preferring opposite and same sex partners). A helpful summary of these terms is offered by comedian and activist Sam Killerman in his illustration of “The Genderbread Person.”

Gender identity, sexual orientation, biological sex, and gender expression are helpful to untangle the virtually infinite complexities of gender and sexual identities. More importantly, these terms help us analyze how advertisers’ messages involve certain meanings and definitions of gender and sexuality that may be overly simplistic, or perhaps progressive and cutting edge. Some advertisements may espouse strict gender binaries, while others may play with gender boundaries which have shifted in recent times.

For this new survey of representations of gender in advertisements, it should be kept in mind that gender is now conceived to go beyond two categories of identity. That is, gender is a multiplicity of identities relative to individuals. As such, age-old gender expectations are being challenged and questioned, which makes it challenging for some, especially those working in advertising, to represent that complexity of our cultural and social lives. How can advertisers successfully appeal to a variety of gender identities, when they may only have one moment to leave an impression on millions of viewers through a thirty-second television spot, a fifteen- second YouTube ad, a one-second Facebook banner ad, a billboard next to a busy highway, or a fashion spread in a magazine? Simplicity and speed are of the essence in our saturated media environment, so how can complex gender identities be treated with such little audience attention span?

To be sure, gender fluidity and the complexities that come with it are especially challenging for advertisers who regularly strive to create certainty in selling products and ideas for their clients.

If there is so much diversity in gender identifications, how can advertisements’ mass-mediated messages effectively resonate with large groups of individuals? Do advertisements solidify certain historically accepted gender norms? Alternatively, do advertisements reflect or fuel changes in gender norms? How have advertisements challenged dominant, binary notions of masculinity and femininity?

As was noted in the 2006 survey, advertising tells important stories about masculinity and femininity and the roles that men and women and boys and girls should play and aspire to at different points in their lives. Gender roles are culturally determined in any particular moment, but this does not mean that what appears at one time does not have relevance or resonance at another point in time. For example, advertisements showing the ideal housewife/mother from the 1940s may express similar ideals as representations of women found in advertisements today, such as the need to take care of the home, and to teach their daughters how to be masters of a clean home, too. In other words, advertisements’ representations of masculinity and femininity can reinforce and legitimate certain gender roles and hierarchies between men and women.

Advertisements’ representations, thus, idealize and model certain roles and behaviors for men and women while ignoring others. What is emphasized in one moment may change or be solidified in the cultural registry. As such, studying changes in advertisements’ representations of gender allow us to see how advertisements may serve as a site of resistance to, or acceptance of, changing views on social and cultural categories like gender.

Therefore, in this unit, by paying close attention to what has changed (and, most importantly, what has not changed) from 2006 to 2016, advertisements’ dual treatment of gender is revealed: advertisements’ representations can solidify and reinforce historic gender norms; they can also shift and adapt society’s understandings and expectations of gender. In the end, advertisements do not merely serve the function of selling products. Rather, their representations can be a site of struggle to hold on to, or let go of, old ways of conceiving of masculinity and femininity.

2.  Representations of Masculinity and Femininity in Advertisements from 2006

 In the 2006 ADText unit, out of over 1,000 advertisements found in newsstand magazines from May to June 2006, eighty-seven ads were analyzed to uncover how masculinity and femininity emphasized certain gender roles and expectations throughout the human life cycle.

Across many of the ads, boys and men were placed in elevated positions of masculine power and strength compared to girls and women, who were often depicted as passive, submissive participants dependent on, or seeking the approval of, men. It is men who drive the action of a particular scene—such as a dinner night out—or are the center of attention—such as a father holding his baby on his shoulders, while an adoring wife looks on, during a walk outside.

One distinct role for women seen in 2006’s ads, especially for women depicted in their early adult years, was to be objects of desire for men’s viewing or prospective sexual pleasure.

When women were not something to gaze upon, they often were depicted in the roles of nurturers of children, keepers of order within the home, or cooperative brokers, usually among other girls and women.

In other words, in the sampling from 2006, girls and women were treated with ritualizations of subordination.17 In these rituals, or common practices of representing men and women, advertisements project and reinforce gender hierarchies between men and women through various strategies: making men appear larger than women, putting men at the center of women’s attention, having men stand in more secure positions, using women with large, goofy smiles, and showcasing men actively accomplishing goals, while women were often shown as immobile or passive individuals in a scene. All of these rituals elevate men’s status above women.

Similarly, throughout the life cycle, advertisements’ representations in 2006 tended to prioritize and emphasize boys’ and men’s vigor and accomplishments, while girls and women were often reduced to their more submissive or passive roles—often in interior locations. Even when girls and women were featured in strong positions beyond a caregiver role, such as athletes or businesswomen, their assertiveness was often undermined by their heightened femininity, as seen in their wearing prominent make-up, well-painted fingernails, fashionable clothing, and perfectly coiffed hair.

In addition to elevating the status of masculinity over femininity, the 2006 advertisements’ representations of parenthood reinforced the importance for both men and women of reproducing clear male-female gender role distinctions in future generations. The term social tableaux—the way in which advertisements depict relationships among people to reinforce certain societal structures—reminds us that advertisements present expected gender roles in society.20 When looking across the 2006 advertisements, one can see representations showcasing fathers teaching their sons traditionally masculine life lessons, such fishing or doing more interesting things than homework.

Similarly, there are representations that emphasize women’s roles as nurturing mothers and caregivers, showcased by representations of a mother teaching her daughter how to be kind and caring through nurturing acts.

Representations that show fathers giving sons masculine life lessons and mothers giving daughters feminine life lessons function on two significant levels. First, such ads reinforce divided gender roles and expectations along male-female lines, which segregates fathers/sons and mothers/daughters into separate spheres. Second, and more significantly, such messages legitimate ad viewers’ reenactment of separate gender roles in their everyday lives. In other words, ads with gendered life lessons show how fathers and mothers can teach their sons and daughters, respectively, to take on their traditional male and female roles. Such messages, by implication, state that the blurring of gender lines is confusing and troublesome.

Across both men and women, older individuals in the later stages of life were excluded from main newsstand magazines in 2006. If such older men and women were featured, it was often for medications to heal such individuals’ ailments. Men more than women were still shown as active, accomplished, and in control of their lives; older women were relegated to taking care of grandchildren, resting in an interior setting, or being taken care of by her stronger male companion.

Keeping this summary of the 2006 advertisements in mind, along with the Adweek article mentioned previously, an important question emerges: Have ads continued to reinforce gender divisions and a distinct separation of masculinity from femininity? To answer this question, over four dozen ads are analyzed below, from out of over 1,000 ads appearing in major newsstand magazines in May and June 2016.

From this comparison, one will learn that not much has changed in girls’ and women’s subordination. However, there are some notable adjustments in the relaxing of some masculine ideals (perhaps pushing toward more feminine ideals for men), especially for men of the Millennial generation born between roughly 1982 and 2002. Gender’s treatment in advertisements has become slightly more fluid for younger so-called metrosexual men, but much has remained the same in ten years’ time.

3.  Advertisements Ten Years Later: Some Changes, But Not So Many

 In comparing advertisements from 2006 to 2016, there are some changes, but not as many as Adweek’s “Ungendered” piece would lead one to believe. Although some gender fluidity is seen in many advertisements depicting Millennial metrosexuals, girls and women still are seen enacting rituals of subordination. Hierarchies along gendered lines still persist, leading one to question how far changes have come for breaking from longstanding gender divisions.

In representing the early years of a child’s life, advertisements continue to showcase distinct roles for girls and boys, which is stressed through gender-stereotyped coloring, such as pink for girls and blue for boys. The division between boys and girls through this color scheme reveals more than a simple way to classify and identify girls and boys. Rather, the colors blue and pink provide stability in knowing the sex of a baby. Even before a baby is born, a common question is asked: “Boy or girl?” This question signifies the importance of clearly identifying a newborn’s gender, which leads to the reinforcement of specific expectations for the baby based on his/her being a boy or a girl. Ambiguity in gender can be seen as potentially worrisome.

The following ad for a baby gender prediction kit showcases the desire to know and maintain firm gender boundaries for babies. This ad confuses the difference between biological sex and gender. The name of the product, “IntelliGender,” implies that parents are smart if they know their baby’s exact gender. What is significant to note about this product is that a medical test is being used to determine gender. However, as it has been made clear earlier, gender is an act of culturally-bound self-expression.

The IntelliGender ad also provides a glimpse into societal concerns about knowing a clear gender status of babies. On a basic level, knowing a baby’s biological sex reassures parents of what to buy for the baby—perhaps it will dictate what types of clothes to buy, what color to paint a bedroom wall, and what kinds of toys to purchase. On a deeper level, knowing the baby’s sex helps parents imagine the expectations for the baby, based on culturally and socially subscribed gender roles. In other words, knowing if the baby is either a boy or a girl helps simplify expectations, based on the longstanding divide between males and females.

The product’s assertion that there are only two genders, and the need to label people as either male or female, is strengthened through the ad’s colors. The use of pink for the word “girl” is distinguished from the word “boy” in blue. The black word “or” in “Girl or Boy?” serves to emphasize that distinction. To solidify the importance of gender differences, the father wears a blue shirt while he holds pink baby booties close to the mother. Overall, this advertisement reveals a world where biological sex is expected to match up with gender identity. The colors blue and pink maintain society’s gender binary. The product provides security, relief, and a sense of stability to parents not accepting of gender fluidity.

Even for seemingly gender-neutral products such as a soothing gel for teething babies, or a calming baby formula, blue is coded for boys and pink is coded for girls to create clear gender divisions. Embedded in these representations is the expectation for mothers to care for and tend to their sick children as caregivers. Although there is a father depicted in the Gerber ad, the dominant images for adults soothing the baby girl are women, reinforcing women as central caretakers in a baby’s life.

Although many ads of babies tend to follow the pink and blue convention to distinguish boys from girls, some break the mold by using other colors. In the following Desitin ad, although the baby is designated as a girl through the repeated use of the word “her,” the purple and gray shirt creates some gender ambiguity. In the American context, dark purple and gray may not immediately signify a boy or a girl—such colors could be worn by a boy or a girl. Further, this gendered dissonance is reinforced through the boombox image appearing on the shirt and the color blue dominating the bottom of the advertisement, both of which could be associated with boys. Beyond gender neutrality, the color purple often has lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, or queer (LGBTQ) connotations, as seen in supposedly gay coded children’s characters like the purple Teletubby named Tinky Winky, various LGBTQ organization logos, and Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Color Purple, which features a lesbian romance.28 By using a color like purple that is neutral or aligned with LGBTQ identities, advertisers deftly depict babies living in a more gender and sexually flexible society.

Ads may also use other gender-neutral colors, such as yellow, orange, and green, to break down the pink-blue dichotomy. In such cases, viewers have flexibility in ascribing the gender they see fit depending on their cultural perspective. Advertisements’ increasing play with ambiguous color codes showcases possible appeals to audiences who regard traditional binary gender roles as restrictive and outdated.

In 2006, many ads paired mothers with their children to underscore women’s roles as caretakers for the family. This trend is visible in this new survey of ads, but fathers were increasingly featured in child-rearing and home care roles. A Barilla ad shows how a father can have fun guiding his child on the proper way to eat angel hair pasta. In a Zillow ad, the father is in control of a large children’s party. For TD Ameritrade, a father is in command of his child’s fun. Across all of the ads, though, fathers are the drivers of action and the center of attention. They are goofy providers of fun and laughter who might make a mess and never clean it up. Such a role contrasts sharply to a mother’s serious job of consoling others, cleaning up, or teaching children, usually daughters, lessons on how to keep a beautiful home, as seen earlier in the Mr. Clean ad. Further, even when fathers are depicted in a caretaking role, their strength in other, more traditionally masculine aspects of life are emphasized. In TD Ameritrade’s ad, the father can attend to the house and bring fun to his child. However, as the copy reads, a man’s mastery over his money (and thereby his family’s financial security) is more important than watching over children and a home’s cleanliness: “Get your financial house in order. Your actual house can wait.”

As seen in the ads from 2006, societal and cultural expectations for girls and boys are reinforced when children reach their adolescent years. The color coding of blue and pink is still often used to distinguish boys from girls, but what is most notable is how boys and girls are separated by what they can and should do. Boys are still often depicted as active and outdoors. They are masters of their destiny and go out into the world exploring and taking risks outside on the playground or playing field.

Girls, on the other hand, are not as active. Girls are regularly featured indoors, cleaning, playing dress-up, cooking, or doing less active hobbies such as reading. From the formative years of a child’s life, then, advertisements represent clear expectations for boys and girls. Boys are told to go out and achieve success outside the home. Conversely, girls are supposed to find their happiness through how they look and what they can achieve in the comforts of home.

Even in instances when boys and girls are featured together outside, boys often take the lead or are the center of attention, revealing the expectation for boys to excel and be the drivers of action and success.

In play spaces, divisions between boys and girls also appear subtly. In a gymnasium scene advertising Lunchables, boys are shown in the most noticeably daring positions—climbing a rope, hanging from a basketball hoop, or pole vaulting across the room. There are girls featured in daring positions, too, but most are tenuous and apprehensive, such as the girl hanging over an exercise ball seeking a boy’s help, and a girl teetering on a tower of equipment. The strength of the girls’ pyramid formation is hidden compared to the boy in the foreground using all of his might to win a game of tug-of-war. From this scene, then, boys are positioned in more prominent positions of strength than their girl peers, solidifying the view of boys as actors in society with girls being apprehensively active. As summarized in a scene with a boy and girl eyeing up a fish tank, girls look on as boys take the adventurous risk of going on “a quest in the deep, blue sea.”

The gender divisions for children in magazine advertisements do not insinuate that there are no challenges to stereotyped images of girls as passive and inactive. In fact, there have been campaigns beyond magazine pages that seek to embolden girls and shift expectations of what it means to be a modern girl. One such effort is Always’ 2014 and 2015 Super Bowl campaign featuring several online videos showcasing stereotyped views of girls, along with messages seeking to quash such visions of girls as unathletic, passive, and docile.

As found in 2006, when girls transition to teenagers and young adults, the ads in this new survey push beyond the seemingly innocuous dichotomy of girls wearing pink tutus and boys playing with toy trucks in blue dungarees. In many advertisements, as girls turn to young women, they are reduced to how they stack up to various standards of beauty and sexuality. Ad messages seek to convince audiences that adhering to such ideals is desirable and necessary for young women compared to other priorities and accomplishments.

Young adult men are featured for their physical attractiveness, too. However, they are often depicted in positions of strength, control, and accomplishment, as seen through their physicality or savviness in work. Further, when depicted with women, men form the center of attention or are the largest people in an image, thereby enhancing the relative size and therefore prestige of men.

Even ten years later, advertisements’ messages about and to women still contradict larger societal messages of feminism and gender equality.⁵² On the one hand, girls and women are told they can have it all today: a good education, a successful job, and a loving relationship and family. These positive messages for girls and women to achieve their goals are reinforced in many ads, such as one ad for allergy relief, where a successful girls’ soccer team makes the most of its opportunity to succeed. Similarly, in an ad for Travel to Colorado, a woman in a canoe makes the most of the world that is hers to explore. As the copy reads, “Our future has yet to be written.” On one level, the message speaks to the uncharted wilderness of Colorado. However, on a more symbolic level, the ad’s text speaks to today’s women who are at the precipice of writing their own story of success.

On the other hand, many advertisements equate women’s power with their beauty and sexuality, which may undermine messages of gender equality. Women and girls are told that they can be successful through the purchase of beauty products or reenactment of the feminine beauty standards embedded in advertisements’ messages. With such logic, women’s liberation comes through her consuming power and not her intellect or work achievements.

One common way that advertisements try to help women achieve success through beauty products is through recipe, ingredient, or instruction pieces, such as that featured in Covergirl’s advertisement for clear looking skin. The message to girls and women is that they, too, like teen celebrity Becky G., can achieve the “flawless” skin so desired—and expected—for respectable, successful, and noteworthy women. Even more explicit is Murad’s moisturizer ad, which tells women that they can achieve success—a “brighter outlook” and a “beautiful life”—by having bright skin.

Sometimes, ads that seem uplifting for girls and women are subtly counter to such messages. In a Colgate ad encouraging women to “Smile with Strength,” a woman bites down on athletic tape. The word “strength” appears to insinuate that this woman featured in athletic wear is strong, but any notion of strength is challenged by the woman’s wearing a bra-like top, and the message of the ad that women should somehow always be smiling and pleasant. Further, as the concept of the ritualization of subordination reminds us, any power that could come from this athletic woman is absorbed by her use of a clownish smile.⁵⁷

In another advertisement, for DSW, women are told to “derive satisfaction within,” which insinuates building up one’s innate sense of self. However, closer inspection of the secondary title, it becomes clearer that a woman’s worth and her ability to achieve come through the shoes she buys: “Where will your shoes take you?”

In another ad, for Nair, the explicit message to girls and women is that they can “Free your most beautiful self” through hair-removal cream. However, the ad links women’s freedom with beauty and her necessity to maintain “healthy-looking, radiant skin.” Further, the use of the ballet dancer’s canted head and extended slender legs insinuates that for full enjoyment of freedom, women must adhere to being docile and available. Thus, women’s value comes through their maintenance of their beauty regimen that makes them more attractive and available to others.

Since 2006, there has been a noticeable rise in what has popularly been called the “metrosexual.” This “new man” is a young, urban, and heterosexual male who, ignoring previous, more “macho” ideals for men, is concerned about how his hair looks, what clothes he wears, and how nicely he is groomed.61 Not afraid of being criticized for caring about fashion, his appearance, and his level of taste—once deemed “effeminate” concerns—the metrosexual finds strength and pride in being attractive to others. Like instructional ads for women, magazine ads encourage metrosexuals’ fascinations with achieving the perfectly shaven face or the well- placed untucked shirt.

On a continuum of gender identity—with male and female making up extreme poles—the metrosexual, therefore, represents an expansion of what defines traditional masculinity. Rather than masculinity being defined by longstanding images of a man of brute strength and stamina, performing feats through physicality, having rugged and taxing hobbies outdoors, or a successful businessman in professional attire, acceptable notions of masculinity have shifted closer to more traditionally feminine concerns of sharp clothes and a well-groomed body.

The acceptable masculine ideal for men now includes the need to be more concerned about one’s looks and desirability compared to earlier times. This reveals more flexibility afforded to men to express their gender identity. This does not mean that metrosexual masculinities are not challenged among men. Other, more traditional notions of rugged masculinity, such as those found in images of men in the country or woods doing hard work outside, may have an elevated status as being “genuinely” masculine. In other words, there are now more refined and varied notions of masculinity, and there are debates on what is deemed more masculine or manly. In the end, though, men in advertisements are more enabled than they are for women. Women still must adhere to ideal standards of beauty and sexuality that reinforce submissiveness. Men, as seen through the metrosexual, are not submissive objects of desire; they are emboldened and successful through their keeping up with the fashionable times.

This is not to say that unrealistic standards of beauty and sexuality for women are not criticized. One well-known critique is Dove’s 2009 “Evolution” campaign, highlighting the use of digital altering techniques to create unrealistic expectations of beauty and body shape for women. Additionally, critics such as Jean Kilbourne continue to show how objectification of women in advertisements undermines women’s abilities to imagine themselves as anything other than as objects of desire and beauty, or as submissive nurturers.⁶⁸

As seen in the earlier survey of ads, men and women in the later stages of life (beyond the “ideal” target demographic of 18–35 year olds) are still often relegated to the periphery in advertising. Today, because of the aging population of Baby Boomers, America has the largest number of older individuals in its history.70 Despite their significant number, older men and women are still not as visible as their younger counterparts in many newsstand magazine advertisements.

However, the new survey presents some changes in how older men and women are represented in advertisements. Given longer lifespans and the aging Boomer population’s active lifestyle, older men and women are depicted in more lively situations. Older women and men are still regularly featured in some ads within interior spaces or facing ailments, but many are now shown in more active situations: running races, partaking in a serious bike ride, and doing yoga. Additionally, older women remain associated with watching their grandchildren, but they are more energetic and fun with the enabling enhancements of medication, as Tylenol demonstrates.

Older people are still not sexualized like their younger counterparts, but this does not mean that older people’s sexuality is not a target of discussion, as seen in advertisements for sex-enhancing drugs such as Viagra, or even sex-enhancing devices for older women, such as Estring. Because of older individuals’ relative absence in advertisements, and older men and women having their sexuality and physical beauty striped away, one can see that society prioritizes young adult life as the peak moment of ideal femininity and masculinity.

As noted earlier with the stereotyped images of girls and women, the idealization of youth has also been questioned. One prime example is the “Disrupt Aging” 2016 campaign from AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons. The goal of this campaign was to “celebrate all those who own their age,” and to “feature new ways of living and aging.”78 In one of the campaign’s most prominent spots, AARP seems to follow Always’ lead by showcasing and disrupting stereotypes. In this case, young Millennials are paired up with older individuals to do various physical activities like yoga, dancing, and push-ups; the older folks end up outdoing their younger counterparts, which encourages viewers and the Millennials in the commercial to question their preconceived notions of what it means to be an “old” man or woman. Advertisements like the AARP spot show increasing efforts by brands and other organizations to question dominant definitions of masculinity and femininity and the other identifications that intersect with gender identity: ability, age, ethnicity, race, religion, socioeconomic status, among other identities.

Representations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals in advertising are more prevalent in the new survey, but most representations from the sampled magazines do not deviate much from major 2006 trends. There are no representations of LGBTQ children. Although there is a diversity of ethnicities and races present, couples are often kept within their ethnic and racial group. Further, when couples are present, gay men and women tend to take on heterosexual roles—with one partner taking on a more dominant “male” role and another taking on a more passive “feminine” role. Gays and lesbians from higher socioeconomic situations are still dominantly represented, too. In other words, advertisements tend to present an idealized vision of gays and lesbians as able-bodied, fit, well-groomed, wealthy, and in heteronormative relationships.

5.  A Gender-Fluid Future?

 At this unit’s start, it was noted that there may be more gender fluidity today than ever before. The longstanding gender binary of male-female has been challenged on many fronts. In the ten years since the original analysis of magazine ads, there have been changing policies recognizing LGBTQ individuals’ rights in society (i.e. gay marriage), media have increased their representations of transgendered individuals, and famous individuals such as Caitlyn Jenner have come out to share their stories of being transgendered. National Geographic even dedicated an issue to exploring the different expressions of gender around the world.

Today, one’s gender identity does not have to coincide with one’s biological sex. Rather, gender identity may fall along a virtually infinite continuum of gender identifications and expressions. However, there are many people who resist such gender fluid thinking. As such, there is still an unsettled question about whether the diversity of gendered identities can and will be represented in advertisements as society comes to understand and slowly accept more fluid conceptions of gender.

Advertisers, as noted earlier in Adweek’s “Ungendered” piece, are sensitive to changes in how masculinity and femininity are culturally conceived. Yet, as found through this unit’s comparison of advertisements between 2006 and 2016, advertisements’ representations of masculinity and femininity excel in maintaining specific gender roles that have been standard for some time.

In the future, will advertisements’ treatments of gender become more malleable as individuals in society come to slowly understand and accept gender fluidity? Or, will advertisements continue to reinforce more rigid notions of gender expression and identity? The answers to these questions will unfold with time, but we can be certain that advertisements’ representations of gender are not a static or benign force. Advertisements’ representations of masculinity and femininity may hold on to certain historically accepted ideals while breaking and reshaping others. The process is slow with some radical shifts along the way. As citizens and consumers, it is our job to decipher and question advertisements’ ideals of masculinity and femininity and the expectations they place on us and future generations.

Please see the website for additional video examples, author biographies, and footnotes.

Student Examples