'Gender in Advertising' Theorists

Gunter (1995) is a theorist who focuses on how gender (specifically women) are being represented in magazines, comparing their representations in different decades. He found out that women in magazines adverts prior to the 70's were hardly shown in paid work and if they were shown in paid work then they would be in jobs that would usually be associated with the female gender, for example a secretary or a hairdresser. Gunter also concludes that the 'housewife' image was in decline after the 50's but was still quite common in the 60's and 70's. Even though women were shown more as working women, Gunter still found that women were still assumed to be performing domestic duties.

Cumberbatch (1995) done a study of 500 prime time tv ads in the UK and found that advertisers had seemingly become wary of showing women doing housework, which was seen in 7% of the ad's, but also it was shown for the first time that men were shown in the kitchen doing the cooking more often than women. This could be described as one of the instances of the 'new man' coming into affect and men were introduced to more domesticated jobs and women were shown as more dominant than men with there being a role reversal.

Scheibe (1979) done a study of tv ad's and included an assessment of what male and female characters were shown to be concerned about. He concluded that women in ad's were shown to be more concerned about beauty, cleanliness, family and pleasing others, whereas men were only more concerned about achievements and having fun and even if both gender groups were ahown in unusual places or settings, these characteristics were seen to be shining through their role at the moment. This goes some way to show that once a group in the media has been placed in a catagory or has been given a 'label', that stereotype stays with them even when not in their 'mediated habitat'.

Macdonald (1995) was taking an oppositional view to the concept that groups in ad's were normally confirming to their stereotypes in other forms of the media and he noted that "advertisers generally lagged behind women's magazines in the cultivation of new modes of address, even when the evidence suggested that commercial advantages could be gained from modernising their approach", this is Macdonalds arguement that advertsiers were doing nothing to update and modernise womens stereotypes and how they were shown and the conclusion can be drawn that advertisers were the group of people who carried on with the stereotypes given to the women.

Greer- "every woman knows that she is a failure if she is not beautiful", this is one of the more noticable quotations from Greer as he sums up the representation of women both modernised and stereotypical, even in the news where all of the news readers are good looking and young as half of the hype about the news shows is if the news readers are good looking or not. This quotation is a reminder from Greer that the gender equality situation remains unchanged nowadays. "Thirty years ago it was enough to look beautiful now a woman has to have a tight, toned body, including her buttocks and thighs, so that she is in good touch all over", this quotations best describes what messages modelling agencies send out and what attitudes women have these days.

Natasha Walters (1998) quotes suggest that women nowadays are more or less happy with the way they look and instead of women being the unsatisfied with the way they look, it is actually the vast majority of the men who are left feeling unsatisfied with the way that they look, which can be co-insided with the new man and even further towards the metrosexual man who is alot more feminine. "If only 4% of men think that they are attractive, we should not be too quick to argue that only women feel cast down by the pressures of beautiful ideals" (1998). She then goes onto making the point about how more attractive people earn more money than their plain counterparts and this was more apparant for men then women. However, there have been statistics who disagree with walter as it was concluded from a survey that women are ten times more likely to be more unhappy with their body image than men.

Cortese, who wrote in a book called 'provocateur', argues that women are more or less shown to be the perfect provocateur as they are made to look provocative through editing and make up and clothing. " Displays youth, good looks, sexual seductivness and [beauty] perfection", and this is very illustrative of how various companies make women look for any type of commercial or tv advert and this is a common factor, for example in the 'male gaze' theory where mulveys argues that women are just sexual objects and have no purpose in the media, this is going some way as to why this is the case, as women are made to look sexy and seductive, therefore attracting the males attention.