Download OPTIONAL Vanska 4

Gender in Magazine Advertising:
Skin Sells Best
Mary J. Thompson
Abstract
This study involves an analysis of 2007 fashion advertisements published in Gentlemen’s Quarterly (GQ) and
Vogue between 1964, at the beginning of the sexual revolution, and 1994, to see if there were changes in the use
of sexual attire and nudity. The analysis indicates that this use increased in GQ, as well as Vogue, suggesting that
the sexual objectification of both men’s and women’s bodies increased over the forty-year period.
Thompson, M. J. (2000).
Gender in magazine advertising: Skin sells best.
Clothing and Textiles Research Journal,
18(3), 178-181. Key Words: sexual appeal, gender, role fluidity, border work, male body.
Introduction
Within the period of this study, 1964-1994, advertising
gained increasing importance in shaping the standards by
which successive generations will seek to live (Klassen,
M.L., Jasper, C.R. and Schwartz, A.M., 1993). Advertisements showcase attitudes and ideas; the corresponding power
to influence is formidable because advertising can also
change values, such as those surrounding the display and
meaning of the body. Nowhere is the potency of advertising more evident than in the arena of selling clothing and
appearance-related commodities.
The ability to convince today’s audience to desire a
product often depends on sexual appeal, and feminists view
this aspect of advertising as a cause for alarm (McKinnon,
1982). This study analyzes the amount or degree of sexual
appeal in fashion advertising in Gentleman’s Quarterly (GQ)
and Vogue between 1964, which can be described as the last
year before the &dquo;sexual revolution,&dquo; and 1994, ten years after
what might be characterized as the end of this revolution (in
1984).’ I was interested in examining the extend to which
skin exposure, whether on male or female models, changed
over this forty-year period.
At the time I initiated the study, I used a theoretical
framework highlighting &dquo;role fluidity&dquo; (Thompson, 1999)
and changes in the &dquo;border work&dquo; (Thome, 1993) between
masculine and feminine images. Since the completion of
the study, several feminist authors (e.g., Bordo, 1999;
Author’s Address: 3256 SFLC, Home Economics and Family Life
Education, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602.
178
Faludi, 1999) have chronicled the apparent increase in the
commodification and objectification of men’s bodies.
Faludi (1999) notes the rise in &dquo;ornamental culture,&dquo; as
highlighted by the display of men’s bodies in Calvin Klein
ads beginning in 1981. A symbolic interactionist perspective would explain this rise in terms of negotiated changes
in imagery and meaning (Stone, 1962; Workman, and
Johnson, 1993; Nagasawa, Kaiser, and Hutton, 1995). The
images conveyed by advertising have become so sophisticated and persuasive that they now organize our experiences and understandings (Kang, 1997, p. 980)-experiences
and understandings, for example, that surround perceptions
of gender in relation to sexiness. Seeing the world through
advertisements does not necessarily induce direct changes
in how men and women look in everyday life, but it does
shape how individuals think men and women can and should
look. Such depictions serve the social purpose of convincing perceivers that this is how men and women are, want to
be, or should be (Klassen et al., 1993, p. 30). Advertisements serve to define men’s and women’s roles and the
nature of situations in which they find themselves (Albrecht,
Chadwick, and Jacobson, 1987).
To the extent that advertising serves as a mirror of
society (Cunningham, 1992; Kuhn, 1985; Williamson, 1978),
it can also denote societal changes (Belk and Pollary, 1985).
Clothing and appearance symbols may be reconstructed in
less traditional and less dualistic paradigms, for example, as
gender boundaries blur or shift. This process of reconstruction can be described as one of &dquo; role fluidity&dquo; across gender
’The study also analyzed changes in the amount of tailored/traditional
and casual/unisex advertisements over this forty-year period. However, the present paper focuses only on the issue of sexual display.
Such fluidity may emerge
from cultural ambivalences about what it means to appear
masculine or feminine (Davis, 1992). The literature documents the ways in which women’s bodies, in particular, serve
the function of sexual display, but little research is available
to document changes in the display of men’s bodies.
categories (Thompson, 1999).
Review of Literature
A number of authors have studied the sexual content in
often with the expectation that such content
advertising,
increased in relation to the more liberal views on sex associated with the sexual revolution between 1964 and 1984
(Bordo, 1999, p. 129). Sexton and Haberman (1974) measured the extent to which women were presented as sex
objects in 1,827 advertisements in Good Housekeeping,
Look, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, and TV Guide between
1961 and 1971. They concluded that there was a 15% increase in the use of women as sex objects over this ten-year
period. In contrast, Soley and Kurzbard (1986) studied 1,698
advertisements in general interest (Time and Newsweek),
women’s (Cosmopolitan and Redbook), and men’s (Playboy and Esquire) magazines and found little evidence of an
increase in sexual appeals between 1964 and 1984. However, there were important variations among the portrayals;
men’s and women’s magazines showed sexually dressed and
undressed models with greater frequency than the general
interest magazines, and more female than male models were
suggestively clad, partially clad, or nude.
Similarly, Solely and Reed (1988) did
not find an inin the percentage of advertisements between 1964 and
1984, but they did find an increase in the number of sexual
elements within advertisements. Again, female models in
1984 were more likely than male models to be portrayed as
nude or partially nude. Ferguson, Kreshel, and Tinkham
(1990) found that the sexual objectification of women even
applied to Ms. Magazine, with its policy against sexist advertising. They found a 52% increase in the number of
women portrayed as sex objects between 1973 and 1987.
Klassen, Jasper, and Schwartz (1993) used Goffman’ss
(1979) system of gendered &dquo;frame analysis&dquo; to study 3,500
advertisements in Ms., Playboy, and Newsweek which were
overwhelming portrayed in traditional poses. However, they
also found that traditional role depictions of women and men
in these magazines decreased over the period of the study,
to a greater extend than in Ms. magazine.
Kang (1997) also used Goffman’s (1979) frame analysis system to analyze Vogue, Mademoiselle, and McCall’s
magazines. Comparisons between 250 ads in 1978 and 250
in 1991 revealed that women in 1991 were more often portrayed as sex symbols. This study suggested that fashion
advertising in the 1990s became more sexually explicit and
provocative. In a more comprehensive study on the roles
and dress of women, Paff and Lakner (1997) analyzed ads
in Good Housekeeping and Vogue between 1950 and 1994.
They analyzed 375 ads from 25 issues of each magazine,
and found that women were still characterized in predominantly feminine roles and that their dress was more femicrease
nine than masculine over the period of the study.
In the 1980s and into the 1990s, the popular press included articles on sexually explicit content and nudity in
advertising. Comments found in Newsweek (March 11,1985
and September 15, 1986), Art Direction (1989), Forbes
(January 22, 1990), The New York Times (October 4, 1993),
and other periodicals all reinforced the belief that sex sells
products, and a woman’s body traditionally has done it better
than a man’s. Skin appears to sell in any type of magazine
and to any segment of American society (LaTour and
Henthome, 1993; Severn, Belch, and Belch, 1990). In the
late 1990s, writers began to address the ways in which men’ss
bodies have become, and have been used, to sell commodities as well (Bordo, 1999; Faludi, 1999). Yet there is almost
no research that systematically documents the changes in
the sexual portrayals of men’s bodies. My study extends
previous research by including an analysis of male, as well
as female models, in advertising.
Method
magazines of Vogue
and two issues of GQ were
selected for the years of 1964, 1974, 1984, and
1994. The sampling process controlled for seasonal and other
variations in fashion magazine advertising content. In each
issue chosen, all half and full-page advertisements in both
Vogue and GQ were collected. The combined advertisements by years were 391 for 1964; 466 for 1974, 574 for
1984; and 576 for 1994. The total was 2,007 half and/or
full-page advertisements. The advertisements were kept
separate for each fashion magazine and were then divided
into two groups for each respective magazine: (1) those using
female models, and (2) those using male models.
Two men and two women who had been trained in
content analysis charting and coding procedures worked
independently to code the ads. As part of a larger study, the
classification system included an analysis of traditional/tailored clothing and casual/unisex clothing. The present paper focuses on the category of &dquo;sexual appeal.&dquo; This was
operationalized in terms of the following descriptors: reveal-
Two
randomly
ing, nude, disclosing, clinging, showing, divulging, displaying, exposing, exhibiting, or baring. The category included
the display of cleavage or large pectorals in the chest area,
skin on the body, muscularity, complete nudity, or plunging
necklines. Also classified in this category were styles emphasizing the groin area, visible bras (or no bras) and other
lingerie, and those baring the legs from the upper thigh to
the feet (e.g., slit skirts; tennis, aerobic, or exercise wear;
and swimsuit and basketball attire).
To determine internal consistency or stability of measuring over time, a reliability check was done on the advertisements coded by one of the women and one of the men.
Advertisements coded from a single issue of one magazine
were compared. The inter-rater reliability was .85. The
final results
reviewed to see if raters differed on the
If there were disagreements as to placement
of the advertisement in a particular category, the majority
decision prevailed.
were
categorization.
179
Data
Analysis and Findings
Overall, 80 GQ ads and 178 Vogue ads were placed in
the sexual appeal category for the period of the study. These
represented 9.3% of the 861 GQ ads and 14% of the 1,273
Vogue ads analyzed. Table 1 provides a breakdown of these
by year, indicating an overall increase in sexually explicit fashion ads over time. No sexually explicit images of
men were found in GQ before 1984, when 37 were found in
the ads sampled. This finding is consistent with Faludi’ss
(1999) discussion of the influence of the more revealing
data
Calvin Klein ads in 1981. The increase continued in 1994,
when there were 43 &dquo;sexual appeal&dquo; images of men. In
contrast, the dramatic increase in women’s &dquo;sexual appeal&dquo;
images in Vogue occurred between 1964, when there were
only four, and 1974, when there were 53. This increase
coincides with the influence of the sexual revolution-an
influence that apparently applied only to women’s bodies
until the 1980s. There was a reduction in the number of
sexual appeal ads between 1974 and 1984 in Vogue, but a
large increase in 1994.
Table 1. Increase in &dquo;Sexual Appeal&dquo; Clothing Ads: 1964-1984
References
Albrecht, S. L., Chadwick, B. A. and Jacobson, C. K. (1987).
Social Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall.
Beck, A. and Pollary, R. W. (1985). Images of ourselves:
The good life in twentieth century advertising. Journal
of Consumer Research, 11, 887-897.
Bordo, S. (1999). The male body: A new look at man in
public and private. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Conant, J. (1986, September 15). Sexy does it. Newsweek,
108, pp. 62-64.
Cunningham, P. A. (1992). Response to forum: Gendered
appearances in twentieth-century popular media. Dress,
19, pp. 90-92.
Davis, F. (1992). Fashion, culture, and identity. Chicago:
University
of Chicago Press.
Faludi, S. (1999). Stiffed: The betrayal of the American
NY: William Morrow and Company, Inc.
J.
Ferguson, H., Kreshel, P. J., and Tinkham, S. F. (1990).
In MS: Sex role portrayals of women in advertising.
Journal of Advertising, 19, 40-51.
Foltz, K. (1985, March 11). A kinky new Calvinism.
Newsweek, 105, pp. 65.
Goffman, E. (1979). Gender advertisement. NY: Harper
& Row.
Huberman, J. (1989). Cleavage. Art Direction, 40(12), pp.
man.
54-56.
Naked bodies. The New
York Times, pp. D8.
Kang, M. E. (1997). The portrayal of women’s images in
magazine advertisements: Goffman’s gender analysis
revisited. Sex Roles, 37, 979-996.
Klassen, M. L., Jasper, C. R. and Schwartz, A. M. (1993).
Men and women: Images of their relationships in magazine advertisements. Journal of Advertising Research,
March/April, 30-39.
Kuhn, A. (1985). The power of the image: Essays on representation and sexuality. NY: Roultedge.
LaTour, M. S., and Henthorne, T. L. (1993). Female nudity : Attitudes toward the ad and the brand, and implications for advertising strategy. Journal of Consumer
Marketing, 10, 25-32.
Levine, J. (1990, January 22). Marketing: Fantasy, not flesh.
Forbes, 145, pp. 118-120.
McKinnon, C. (1982). Feminism, Marxism, method, and
the state: An agenda for theory. Signs, 7, 515-541.
Nagasawa, R. H., Kaiser, S. B., and Hutton, S. S. (1995).
Construction of an SI Theory of fashion: Part 2. From
discovery to formalization. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, Vol. 13, 234-244.
Paff, J. L. and Lakner, H. B. (1997). Dress and the female
gender role in magazine advertisements of 1950-1994:
A content analysis. Family and Consumer Sciences
Research Journal, 26,
29-58.
Severn, J., Belch, G. E., and Belch, M. A. (1990). The effects
of sexual and nonsexual advertising appeals and information level on cognitive processing and communication effectiveness. Journal of Advertising, 19, 14-22.
Janofsky, M. (1993, October 4).
Discussion
This study documents the increase in sexual appeal
clothing in GQ and Vogue between 1964 and 1994. This
increase occurred earlier in Vogue (between 1964 and 1974),
suggesting that the impact of the sexual revolution was more
easily assimilated into the display of women’s as compared
to men’s bodies. The first sexually explicit imagery involving men’s bodies was found in GQ in 1984, a few years
after Calvin Klein introduced such clothing styles for men.
It is interesting to note that there were actually more explicit
men’s (37) than women’s (24) ads in 1984, but by 1994 the
number of explicit women’s ads more than doubled those of
men’s. Overall, the number of sexual appeal images were
higher in Vogue than in GQ, consistent with the more traditional objectification of women’s bodies. However, it is
noteworthy that sexual objectification has not been restricted
to women’s bodies in the last 15 years, at least. This finding
may be interpreted in terms of &dquo;role fluidity&dquo; (Thompson,
1999) pertaining to sexual display. It seems that a renegotiation of gender boundaries has occurred, to the extent that
dominant, capitalist culture at the end of the twentieth century is unlikely to limit sexual objectification to women’s
bodies. If, indeed,
men’s bodies, too.
180
sex
sells, then it appears to sell well on
Sexton, D. E., and Haberman, P. (1974). Women in magazine advertisements. Journal of Advertising Research,
41-46.
14,
Soley, L., and Kurzbard, G. (1986). Sex in advertising: A
comparison of 1964 and 1984 magazine advertisements.
Journal of Advertising, 15, 46-54.
Solely, L. and Reed, L. N. (1988). Taking it off: Are models
in magazine ads wearing less? Journalism Quarterly,
65, 960-966.
Stone, G. (1962). Appearance and the self. In A. M. Rose,
(Ed.), Human behavior and social processes: An interactionist approach, (pp. 86-118). Boston: Houghton
Mifflin.
Thompson, M.
J. (1999). The effects of Confucianism and
on the role choices of Chinese peasant
in Shandong Province, China: 1930-1980. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Brigham Young Uni-
communism
women
versity).
Thorne, B. (1993). Gender play: Girls and boys in school.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Williamson, J. (1978). Decoding advertisements: Ideology
and meaning in
advertising.
London: Marion Bovars.
Workman, J. E. and Johnson, K. K. P. (1993). Cultural
aesthetics and the social construction of gender. In S.
J. Lennon & L. D. Bums (Eds.), Social science aspects
of dress: New directions. International Textiles and
Apparel Association (ITAA) Special Publication, No.
5, (pp. 993-110). Monument, CO.
181