NEW GENDER ORDER

Advertising Is A Force For A New Gender Order

Advertising Is A Force For A New Gender Order

Advertising is a persuasive communication attempt to change or reinforce ones' prior attitude that is predictable of future behavior. We are not born with the attitudes which we hold toward various things in our environment. Instead, we learn our feelings of favorability or unfavorability through information about the object through advertising or direct experience with the object (e.g., tasting a new brand of beer), or some combination of the two. Furthermore, the main aim of advertising is to 'persuade' to consume in order to generate new markets for production.

In the modern world where media consumption is at an all time high and obtaining information and resources outside of that presented by the media is harder, we need to be aware of how media is constructing the reality of consumers. The well documented rise of the feminism movements during the nineteen-sixties and seventies has shaped a transformation in the roles and representations of women through the media. The nineteen nineties where hugely transformative years where there was a progressive and dramatic change in these representations. The woman was now being consistently represented as self-empowering, intelligent and fully independent. This was a noticeable shift away from the previous objectification that had so long been the main portrayal of women.

The representation of man has also changed dramatically. From the strong and rugged masculine image that created the Marlboro Man and the original James Bond, man is now presented in a lot of general media as being an accessory to the woman, or is objectified according to his looks and physique. The dramatic growth in male grooming products alongside the new pressures to be an all-rounded and balanced person emotionally as well as intellectually are all being broadcasted through different sources in the media.

One such source is the marketing campaigns carried out by large companies. These companies benefit by creating and promoting new styles of masculinity. In this promotion lies a lifestyle package that the consumer buys into, and it is the marketer's job to create a dependency on the product and lifestyle. In an age where more and more confirmation of identity is sought through consumption, it is important to research the power of the image displayed in front of the product being presented through an advertisement.

The purpose in carrying out research on the topic of male representation in advertising is to achieve an understanding of how the representation of male identity and masculinity is linked to a product, as opposed to a product being linked to an identity. The saturation in women's markets has created a need by marketers to develop and target whole new segments in the male industries, some of which until this last decade have never existed before. Changes in lifestyles and in gender balances have created large gaps in the understandings by men of their identity. Marketers aim to satisfy this need to restore the concept of male ...