Gender In Magazine Advertisements free essay sample

Sociologists conduct various types of research in order to study human societies. Depending on the purpose of the research, either qualitative (non-numerical) or quantitative (numerical) research may be more beneficial. Researchers may also use field research in order to see the events as they actually occur or use unobtrusive research of social behavior that people create or leave behind. Content analysis is a form of unobtrusive research that studies documented commercials, such as magazine advertisements. The research conducted in our study required the use of content analysis because the purpose of the study was to look at how gender roles are portrayed within various magazine advertisements. Advertisements have enhanced societies’’ perception of stereotypes and social norms. Advertisements have allowed society to single out outliers that do not fit into their respective stereotypes or follow the expected social norm. The advertisements from various magazines are targeted at different audiences, which were then categorized into four major themes in order to depict the perceived differences between male and female gender roles in American society. Background/Literature Review: Every day, society is bombarded by a slew of advertisements to attract the eye and sell the perfect product. Graphic Designers, Commercial Advertisers, Posters, Magazines etc. are tirelessly edited and revised to sell to the consumer in such a way that makes the product almost possible to resist. However, what methods are being used to help subconsciously persuade each individual? Could the same stereotypical roles that we learned in grade school as discriminatory, sexist, and just plain out wrong be presented in such a way that makes a product appealing to the common consumer? It is important to discuss the fact of how gender roles may be used in any form of advertisement to sell a product and how these subliminal persuasions may alter our view of men and women’s role in society. If exposed to enough sexist media, society may adapt norms that would further stereotype men and women and place sanctions on those that don’t follow them to the letter. In this particular segment of sociological research, it is important to address the issue of how social roles are depicted and demonstrated through the media. In particular, entertainment means such as magazines. The magazine by Barbara B. Stern, particularly talks about the role of gender versus multicultural affairs. What can be derive from this is an image of the broader scope in which media in the past and present, has chosen and portrayed the subject of gender in a rather repressive manner; most often and usually directed towards women. What has been discovered was there are two relationships to be found: the time of which the articles are written and the social infrastructure of society back in the particular era and the culture it’s brought about within. From what is seen in the first article, there exists a correlation between the history and the tone, as well as its social implications, in terms of impact it has brought upon the youths of its generation. For example, â€Å"the focus has shifted from interest in commonalities among women and differences from men to differences between various groups of women† (Stern 1). From what we see here is in other words, is a historical shift from gender dispute to disputes within gender groups. Instead of comparing how men are different to women, we began take a look at how women are different from each other. In a following excerpt, it is also mentioned that if we take a look, again at the historical context of the article: we see that most scholars, writers and journalists were educated men, since women weren’t trained as professionals in education, but as an item which did not require necessary teachings. Additionally, the majority of literature from the past which focuses on women talks about how they were not only socially oppressed, but limited within the confinements of â€Å"wife, mother, sex object and housekeeper – whereas men were found to be free to roam everywhere else. The point of view that governed the production of the images was so automatically male-dominant that women were seen through men’s eyes as generic females who behaved in stereotypical ways† (Stern 2). Contrasting the first excerpt, the second article focuses on the effects of portrayal of women through the eyes of modern society. Stern devised a critique against the social ideology of the representation of women as what she might classify as the ‘lone woman’ of which she provides an example of something as simple as a water commercial, has subliminal messages and intentions which robs a woman of her identity and self-concepts by making the woman in the advertisement seem weak and requires the company of a figure which can protect her – requiring the physique of a man. â€Å"the stereotypic character traits attributed to women have shifted from weak and dependent to strong and autonomous† (Stern 34) Nowadays we move away from the concepts and ideologies from the past and focus on rebuilding what it means to be a ‘woman’ in society, from the depiction what society might consider as the ‘average woman’ into becoming a being which can and is capable of achieving. â€Å"Women of this era are trained for growth and change; they are encouraged to develop wings, not roots† (Stern 34) While on the topic of men, the common stereotype of male superiority constantly reaffirms itself through advertisements. Men usually report positive attitude towards sexual ads while women have a more negative reaction towards explicit sexual content within advertising; men are portrayed as having positive attitudes towards casual and recreational sex, whereas women value the emotional intimacy and commitment that can surround a sexual relationship (Dahl, 2009:215). Dahl conducted four experiments that looked into different methods on how to improve women’s views on sexual advertisements and compared those results against men’s views of the same advertisement. The research focused on reactions to sex-based ads under constrained processing conditions. Researchers found that women’s attitudes toward sexual advertisements improved once the advertised product was a gift from a man to a woman, but men’s attitudes declined toward the gift advertisement. Women that are primed with the notion of a committed relationship responded with a better attitude towards the sexual advertisement when compared to women who were primed with the idea of an uncommitted relationship. The study found that the direction of the transfer of gift matters to women because when the sexual advertisement depicts a woman giving a man a gift there was no influence on women’s attitudes in general. Women view sexual ads with better attitudes after a task that aroused notions of men expressing commitment as compared to an expression of couple’s devotion. The perception within society is that women are usually more likely to verbally and nonverbally express their emotional states than men, while males are usually reluctant to disclose intimate feelings due to what they believe is socially  appropriate or desirable. Males are able to express their feelings more freely in private because social approval or disapproval doesn’t exist. Males and females differ systematically in the social desirability of low-agency emotional expression, but may not differ in terms of felt emotions (Fisher, 2005: 852). The first study used the mean score for viewing pleasure (participants were asked to answer how they felt while watching the advertisement) and attitude toward the ad (the participants were asked how they would rate the ad). Participants were shown one low-agency ad as well as one high-agency ad and were either alone or with one other participant (gender independent). Females had the same viewing pleasure as well as attitude regardless if they watched the ad alone or with a friend. Social context only affected males when they watched a low-agency ad in the presence of another male. The second study used a third variable, agency appraisals (unauthoritive, powerless, or unaggressive) as well as the two variables from the first study. The study found that there were significant differences when males indicated stronger appraisals in public when compared to private viewing context. While advertisements promote males to be against public display of intimate feelings and women overly vulnerable to attachment, the media may also have subliminally created a favoritism of sexist products. Studies conducted by Maria Michelle Morrison and David R. Shaffer of the University of Georgia show that even though participants say they favor unbiased advertisements, men and women usually are persuaded more easily by sexist roles such as women sweeping or an authoritative male voice in car commercials (Morrison and Shaffer: 267). When asked why participants unknowingly chose sexist advertisements, common responses were that the ads felt relatable and more convincing. This bias helps shows that men and women generally relate more to advertisements that fit their description. Another study conducted by Stephen J. Gould of Rutgers University shows self-consciousness traits and advertising responses across a sample of adult Americans (Gould: 215). Gould’s study, through the use of TV advertisements, showed that younger people, primarily females about public appearance and social acceptance of looks, were more self-conscious than older people because of advertisements such as body modifications (Gould: 221). Gould summarized that women â€Å"orchestrate their roles in our society with greater attention both to themselves as social objects and to external cues, such as advertising, that address their needs in those roles† (Gould: 223). What is important to take away from Gould’s experiment is how television advertisement negatively affects younger women’s confidence through the use of photo alteration and over sexualizaton of females. What is most detrimental to society in terms of sexist advertisements are advertisements with children in mind. Gender role portrayals in advertising are influential in society because they perpetuate stereotypes and can present behavioral norms for males and females. In this particular study H. -J. Paek, M. R. Nelson, and A. M. Vilela examined 2,608 prime-time television commercials in Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, South Korea, Thailand, and the U. S. to compare the gender and occupation of the prominent character and the gender of the voice over(Paek:2010:192). They analyzed cultural masculinity, country level gender-related development index, and product type according to the gender of the typical product user. Results revealed that cultural and country factors predicted the gender of the voice-over only whereas product type consistently conformed to the gender of the prominent character (Paek: 2010:192). Overall, women in ads are still idealized and stereotyped as being dependent on men, physically beautiful and perfect, and unintelligent or irrational (Paek:2010:204). S. G. Kahlenberg and M. M. Hein conducted a content analysis in toy commercials airing after school on Nickelodeon to examine gender-role stereotypes in October 2004. They viewed 455 toy commercials, which were analyzed for the type of toy, number of identifiable girls and boys, gender portrayal, gender orientation, age of children, type of interaction, setting, and color of setting. Its purpose was to determine whether toy commercials promulgate traditional gender-role stereotypes to children who are in the formative stages of developing gender schemas, identities, and values(Hein:2009:830). They wanted to show that through the socialization process and long-term exposure to television commercials, that the children are acculturated to develop a preference for toys that are designed, packages, and marketed corresponding to their masculine and feminine identities (Hein:2009:83). The toys themselves were fairly gender-typed, with females portrayed in slightly more limited settings, interactions, and color palettes when compared to males. Thus, through the use of toys, gender youths are promoted to more stereotypical roles such as housework (females) and action (males). Advertisements can affect all different parts of society and can influence it as a whole in an innumerable amount of ways. Considering gender, advertisements have created a major stereotype that women and men have set roles in society and must stick to them. Whether it be a woman’s beauty that affects society or how children grow up with preconvieved notions that one gender is superior to the other, advertisements can be correlated to things such as gender pay gaps or predominately male societies. It is important to point out these flaws in any given part of society, especially something as big as social media, so that it can be corrected in the future to create a more equal society that doesn’t base success and achievement on genders. Data/Methods: Content analysis will be the method that is used in order to understand how magazines portray male and female gender roles by using qualitative data as well as unobtrusive research. The data that is collected will be qualitative because the advertisements within the magazines is nonnumeric information that is describing people, roles, actions, or some event in social life (Newman 2013:37). Content analysis is one of a few types of unobtrusive research, which is a type of examination of data or evidence of social behavior that society leaves behind and the examiner as no contact with the people. Content analysis specifically looks at documented communications such as books, magazines, speeches, poems, television commercials, and social media (Newman 2013:41). Our study uses content analysis because the advertisements that are collected from the various magazines will be targeting different gender roles. This will allow for an analysis of gender roles within the different magazines and can be considered content analysis because no contact with any people is necessary. There are many advantages in using content analysis to provide analysis of gender roles within magazine advertisements. Content analysis is a qualitative form of research, which doesn’t require the researcher to analyze numbers. This type of analysis is useful in our study because it provides insight into how American society views gender roles through language and depictions of advertisements. Depending on the intended audience of the magazine viewer, the advertisements within the magazine will be intended to depict gender roles for the intended audience. An advantage of qualitative research is that it uses subjective information and allows for the data that is collected to be interpreted into themes or categories (Key:1998). Even though content analysis seems to be a perfect type of research for our particular study of gender roles within advertisements of magazines, there are some disadvantages or information that this research method may leave out. There is increased error within content analysis due to the various amounts of perception of the data being analyzed. Within our own study the perception of the meaning of an advertisement may differ from the producer of the advertisements to the researchers. Not every person can view the same image with the same meaning of gender roles that is attempting to be portrayed. There are times when the researcher may not get the same meaning from an image that the producer had intended. Another major disadvantage of content analysis is the difficulty of determining whether the conclusions follow from the data or are they explainable due to some other phenomenon. Our research is based on the generalized conclusions of the group’s portrayal of certain magazine advertisements. The themes of the advertisements that were chosen by the groups must be reliable and defined accurately, in order to measure the idea correctly. A major flaw within content analysis is when the study lacks the stability to categorize the same data the same way over a period of time. Qualitative research is usually slower for the researcher to analyze than analyzing quantitative research, especially if the research is collected by someone else (such as census data). Findings: Based on the information and the example advertisements, it is easily seen how media portrays gender differences in a negative way. The graphs provided (Appendix 2), have shown how women are constantly dehumanized and overly sexualized in most ads. In general, men are portrayed as strong, powerful; dominate forces due in part by their intimidating stance, muscular strength, and performing actions that usually require physical structure and prowess. Women on the other hand are portrayed as meager, vulnerable, and unable to have a commanding presence in the advertisements. Advertisements provided also sell their product through sexual activity. Not only is it used to attract the eye, but it also creates an idea that intimate sexual moments are allowed to become less personal and more about business. What is even more interesting are the certain objects portrayed in the advertisements. For instance, Amazon. com has an advertisement for a stylish purse. Under its fashion catalog the advertisement states Smart is Beautiful. Clearly this advertisement puts women at a lower scale then they deserve, stating that for a women to be smart, they must have fashionable items rather than any intelligence. Another advertisement is a phone case for Apple Devices. The case and phone are outlined with many stereotypical images of male in media such as a male construction worker with a jack saw, women in sunbathing in a bikini, and a man racing a jet ski. The advertisements outline also resembles that of an explosion with all these images coming out of it. One ad that encompasses both male superiority and woman vulnerability seen in most ads is created by Old Spice. The image shown is a man sweeping a woman off her feet while holding several shampoo bottles. Unfortunately, this advertisement shows how society has already accepted this as a common type of advertisement. Due to the acceptance of this, the dehumanization and over-sexualization of human beings in advertisements is now seen as humorous. Additionally, this shows that women are merely objects of a mans interest and can be taken simply by just the smell of his cologne. Conclusion: The study our group conducted on gender and advertising creates a series of dilemmas we can inherently use as a reflection upon its sociological importance. As mentioned, we have presented an array of themes which talks about gender stereotypes and social norms that are portrayed in the media, and its primary prejudicial effects upon women in society. Thus, we must make the necessary correlations which form a coherent understanding between these two interdependent variables. With a brief introduction, it is discussed in Jean Kilbourne’s documentary, Killing Me Softly 4 about the harmful effects of gender and advertising upon the social concept and breach of the question of gender identity as reflected in the means of today’s society: What does it mean to be a woman? In our modern day society, women are constantly bombarded with the ideals and concepts of beauty and being constantly reminded that they are always less than perfect. Society has created an ideal image and figure to achieve, which has affected the modern conception of physical fitness to an extent that makes it nearly impossible to achieve such an ideal model of beauty. Most of the issues that society has created have revolved around the saying, â€Å"your worth is dependent from how you look†. Women are constantly told that they have to be slim, otherwise they are not socially accepted or worthy as an individual, which looks after their own well-being. Consequences of such may include many forms of differing negative sanctions if one does not pursue such unhealthy obsessions with thinness as reflected in the magazines. This in turn, creates an atmosphere where women are portrayed as vulnerable, passive, and silenced through other forms of social repression that ultimately leads to depression, eating disorders, and low self-esteem. Intersectionality is used to describe variables which affect an individual’s subjective perspective upon the world and is often brought up by the conflict perspective through gender stereotypes in communities. The effects of advertising has severely affected the image and way we identify women nowadays, causing new forms of prejudices, thoughts and incentives, discrimination, and taking action upon the prejudice against women who do not fulfill the criteria of the model woman. This could lead to disastrous results as repeated practices eventually turn into forms of institutional sexism in the past, where practices, customs and laws were established that systematically reflect and product gender inequalities in society. The advertisements that were used within our study further confirmed social norms that exist within American society. Norms are culturally defined rules of conduct (Newman 2013:20). Individuals within society are expected to follow norms and causing a norm violation can lead to unusual looks, gestures, or appearances from nearby observing individuals. When a social norm is broken, there will be negative sanctions (reactions) from other individuals within the society. Norms relate heavily to culture because society believes that all members know their expected social norms and will abide by them. The social norms within American society are constantly being reinforced to the citizens through television, magazine, billboard, and other types of advertisements. The advertisements found within the study correlated with American society’s view of gender social norms because women are constantly being portrayed as submissive, meager, vulnerable, and unable to have a commanding presence. On the other hand, advertisements are consistently portraying men as muscular, strong, powerful, and performing actions that usually require physical structure and prowess. Individuals within society whom do not abide by the expected gender social norms are considered outliers. Individuals who are outliers have a greater risk of receiving negative sanctions from other individuals. A sanction is a direct social response to some behavior; a negative sanction is one that punishes or otherwise discourages violations of social norms and symbolically reinforces the culture’s values and morals (Newman 2013:54). The gender social norms that are expected from both men and women are constantly being reinforced through advertisements in order for men and women to clearly understand what behavior will and will not be accepted by the rest of society. One of the biggest issues within American society that continues to remain a problem is gender inequality. â€Å"Sexism is a system of beliefs that asserts the inferiority of one sex and justifies gender-based inequality† (Newman 2013:198). Advertisements are constantly reinforcing sexism because many advertisements objectify women in various ways. Martha Nussbaum claims that there are six typical ways in which advertisements will objectify women. Studies have shown that objectification of women in advertisements has led to an increase in violence from men towards women, which in the end advertisements help promote sexism by depicting men as being more superior to women. Ultimately, we believe that despite all the changes we have observed to bring drastic changes to the image of women in society, it is always important to remember that as mentioned in Killing Me Softly, that we shouldn’t underestimate the power of advertisement and its effects, because it can’t be ignored out of sheer will, because it is an ongoing unconscious process. It creates an unhealthy environment sets a certain degree of distortion within the natural image of men and women. General ideologies will begin to change within a matter of time because of the perceptions we are constantly bombarded with and reminded by every day. This not only leads to sexual repression, but is also known to be the cause of global widespread of violence activity since the exposure of advertising. What we must focus on is to begin to pay attention to the recognizable problems, and begin to change the environment in order to change the attitude.