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With reference to theories developed on the course, Undertake a detailed study if three recent advertisements or fashion images that include representation of me and/or women.

In this essay, I plan to look at three advertisements and deconstruct and analyse the depicted image of gender within the advertisement. The three advertisements I have chosen are, a Lynx Deodorant advert, a Boots advert “Here come the girls.” And an Ann Summers advert “Give him wood”.

I will begin with the Lynx deodorant advert. The advert opens with a young woman standing drenched at the top of a subway entrance, who says “No, you’re not late, it’s my watch, its’ always fast.” As the advert progresses it becomes obvious that everything the women say in this advert completely contradict the way woman behave in the real world. For example, phrases like “You look so sexy playing air guitar”, or “oh how lovely you noticed my breasts” are not realistic phrases that women use every day. Furthermore, after quite a few shots of the female anatomy in this advert, it becomes apparent that the lynx deodorant claims that with it, you get away with anything. With this deodorant, you not only could you arrive late on a date but also turn women to “putty” at the same time. The advert depicts women as being desperate to please the male, so much that they will overlook anytime he does something wrong or says something inappropriate. In every scenario, the male partner has caused problems within the relationship, but this is completely accepted and forgotten by the female partner. Scenarios such as “She meant nothing to you?!.......well in that case I guess I can forgive you” or praising him for “looking at her breasts.” 

The advert also includes many things that a man enjoys. Physical things like sex, sexual fantasies, lap dancing etc, things a man wants physically feature a lot in this advert. “Do you mind if my friend joins us?” is a top fantasy for men, “after sex. I’m out like a light”, “If I’d wanted foreplay I would have asked for it” and “Of course you can have some money for a lap dance”. All of these things would very rarely happen for a male and are quite unrealistic but this lynx product seems to allow you to defy all logic and get them. Women in the advert are very much the attention of the male gaze, firstly because it is a first person camera angle, which means that the women gaze directly towards us and often in many of the scenes, the women have seductive, sensual, and naive looks on their faces. “This heightens the male gaze as we feel that the women, through their portrayal, are effortless and easy women to get with, and that we can easily get what we want from them, that they would give themselves up easier than real women.  “Men are the bearers of the look while women are the object to be looked at.. Women watch themselves being looked at...thus she turns herself into an object- and most particularly an object of vision”.

Forgiveness on the part of the women plays a big part in these adverts, for example the women use expressions like,  “It’s ok, you’ll remember my birthday next year”, “She meant nothing to you, well if you put  it that way I guess I can forgive you”, and “You’re not late, it’s my watch, it’s always fast”. These are all things that we know true women would not stand for in any way, after too many excuses or let downs, the only consequence would be a divorce or end of relationship. There would be no talking your way out of it, but here in this advert, the women seem un-phased by the events, which contrast the image of real women, in fact, they seem to take on the attitude most men have. The woman are very much desirable in this advert, men would want these woman as their partners as they want, need, and give what men want. 

The boots, “here come the girls” advert is a very interesting one in how it represents women. The advert is set in an office, where there is a Christmas dinner being held. The women are beginning to put on their make-up and file their nails. The advert portrays women as taking great pride in their appearance and there is a real a sense of competition between the women. Throughout the advert the women are constantly glancing at each other as if to say, “Oh what’s she going to do with her hair?”, or “I could try that eye make-up”. This is I feel an insight into a woman’s mind, and what she is thinking when she sees another woman, she breaks down her outfit, make-up, and hair and judges it based on her own, and that of celebrities. Why do women try to dress and use make-up, to try to gain attention from the opposite sex? To have a sophisticated aura about them?  “Rather than comparing different images of women one needs to study the meanings signified by women in images with reference, for instance, to man in images. “The advert contains many signifiers that, using semiotics, I can decipher. The cheeky snatches, and evil stares are very much typical of real women. Although the advert is staged, I feel that many of the characteristics that the women in this advert seem to possess are quite accurate to those of real women. However, this is purely my opinion.

There does appear to be a class division, for example, we see women from all ranks of the work place in the advert, cleaners, telephone operators, right up to a woman who appears (and using semiotics to deconstruct her) to be a manager or someone of a superior position to the others. She is dressed in a smart jacket and skirt, whereas the majority of the other employees are dressed in skirts and blouses. This shows that women from all levels of employment still have that basic desire, that yearning to better other women, to look prettier to dress better, to stand out more. The only visual reference to males is in the party before the women arrive, this shows that the advert is very much a women’s advert made for women, men do not feature very much. 

The third advert I am going to concentrate on is the Ann summers advert “give him wood”. The advert from the offset shows woman as objects, desired objects due to their perfect bodies and lingerie. The camera inclines to certain parts of the female anatomy, very difficult for any male to avoid looking at. The advert is very obviously made for the male audience, because the majority of women do not want to look at other (perhaps more attractive/slender) walking around in their underwear. It shows women using their body dressed only in Ann Summers finest lingerie to seduce anyone. It seems to me that one of the men seduced is one of the women’s bosses. The tag line is “Give him wood this Valentine’s day” this is very clearly a sexual innuendo. One is the wooden presents that all the women leave for the males in the advert and the other is the play on words for the male penis. There are some strong visual references made to the male anatomy, one of which displays a woman sanding a pillar shape and the way she caresses it, is aimed to be very seductive to a male viewer, leading us into the male gaze again, a sense of easiness, and willingness of the young woman. This is similar to Kants theory of pleasure with its voyeuristic ideas of watching people for example in the cinema we can watch them quite happily but when the look straight into the camera and make as it where direct eye contact with us we would feel un-easy as an audience. 

The first woman in the advert prowls onto the bed like a lion or tiger, she moves very seductively and sexually across the bed. This animal-like mimicking could resemble her primal instinct of mating. Another one of the women in the advert gives the male a wooden duck then stands waiting expectantly to be stared at, she is almost encouraging the male gaze, she wants the male gaze, it would appear that that is her primary objective, to get the attention of the male. At the start of each scene the woman are the establishing shot, be it their legs, bottoms, bust etc. We only see their faces as the gifts are handed over to the males; it is really only their bodies that are selling the products. There is no real need to see their faces, as this no doubt it not what the male viewer is interested in. “If a woman is shown on an advertisement simply decoratively and not because she has any relevance to the product, then the advertiser must be using her for salacious purposes”. One of the girls bites her lip as she gives her present to the male, this is a very strong sexual message being sent, that she is ready and willing, which complements the male gaze. “The relation between spectator-buyer of these images and the picture of woman created in these photographs is that of forceful intrusion or indeed possessive voyeurism inviting rape”. Although this quote talks about still images of women within adverts I feel it could apply here, especially in this advert. As the women are so scandalously dressed in this advert that the primal desires of males are targeted and the voyeuristic nature through which we watch adverts is similar to Kants theory of pleasure.  

To conclude, the three adverts I have looked at all depict women in an unrealistic manner, there focus on a very small minority of women. Not all women are sex on the brain, not all women will lie to keep their boyfriends, or fiancés happy, and not all woman fight to better other women, but some do. In these adverts, the women are objects of the male gaze and in two of the three adverts, they are desired objects. This is not always the case in advertisements, advertisements such as those for cleaning products and beauty products (Dove) portray a more realistic woman. I feel that the first advert lynx could be enjoyed by both sexes, as the comedy is not limited to just the male sex and I feel that the advert would amuse women as well, since it is such an unlikely portrayal of women. The Boots advert shows a much more realistic representation of women, which is much truer to real life than the Ann Summers advertisement. In this advert women are just the objects on which the products displayed and they only feature in this advert to show off the products to their full potential, the women are exploited in the last advert and are wrongly represented in comparison to real women and their attitudes.