Promotional culture: Women advertisement essay
Contemporary promotional culture is a compressed image of the modernity, projecting the whole scope of public relations, and gender relations in particular. At the same time, affecting the audience through the subconscious, the simplification of gender roles in commercial campaigns produces their simplified treatment in the life of every individual. Thus, in addition to its primary function which is to force the consumer to choose particular products, advertising serves its social function in creating the prototypes and patterns of public relations. Gender symbolism of advertising, and more precisely, the most widely used image of women, dictates modern individuals what male and female social roles should be and how powers between the sexes should be distributed. By means of contemporary promotional culture, modern women appear to us as hostages of either household duties, or the desires of men, being shown to the audience in the role of victims of their obsessions and fetishism. Further we will consider this thesis through the prism of cosmetics promotion products and tools for their implementation, thus explaining how they shape the contemporary image, values and lifestyles of women in the society.
Indeed, today most of the advertising products are targeted specifically at women (Hogg and Garrow 161). Many researchers believe that women are more inclined to trust promotion campaigns due to a number of reasons: they are generally more romantic and gullible, compared with men who are more inclined to trust their own experience only; besides, women show themselves as the most active consumers (basing on Hogg and Garrow; Nigam and Jha; Macdonald). This, in particular, is the reason why advertising targeted at women is always more colorful, and uses the brightest and most effective means to attract consumer attention in the areas of gender interest. As a result, out of all the advertising addressed to women, 39 % are offering them personal care like cosmetics, perfumes, and medicines (Hogg and Garrow 168). Here, it is obvious that the culture of promotion plays on the feelings experienced by most women – their instinctive need for love, affection, recognition and attention from men (Wernick, Macdonald).
The natural beauty has always been improved by women by means of applying a variety of cosmetics; and no matter how fashion was changing, one thing has always remained the same – a woman’s desire to look better. For instance, in ancient Egypt, already 5000 B.C., women powdered their face, used eye shadows and incenses, and painted nails and hair, which was not only for the religious and medical purpose, but also was bearing aesthetic function (Macdonald 78). Later, the Roman philosopher Plautus compared women without make-up with the unsalted food. Thus the origins of this stereotype have been forming in the mentality of people for centuries forcing women make any efforts to attract the opposite sex for procreative reasons dictated by evolution laws. This deepness of this instinct’s roots makes it easier to influence the current decision of women.
Today, the inception of these ideas is the underlying reason of all advertising campaigns aimed at promoting cosmetic products. For example, the promotion campaign of Telescopic Mascara by L’Oreal Paris involves the appearance of a gorgeous woman with shiny, heavily made-up eyes wearing dark-colored clothes, who looks invitingly from the screen. The music is aggressive, the tones are dark, and the look is soulful and passionate. In the social mind, the idea is rooted that it is exactly the women of these type who can seduce any man; these are exactly the women who are loved by men with a mysteriously unique love. The image of a model tells us: “take this mascara, and you will have the same things I have”, model’s behavior dictates the viewer: “do what I do, and you will be the same, which means you will manage to charm a prince, get a beautiful, brave, rich and generous man”. The main condition for this is matching the depicted image.
The key to the success of this advertising in its impact on the consumer, in the first place, consists in its “tempting” character. Promotion campaigns aimed at women, not only promise the obtainment of pleasure with the acquisition of a product, but also create the desire for it as such (Wernick 185; Nigam and Jha 113). The first step in this direction is the creation of the object of desire. One of the most seductive and desirable and, therefore, one of the main characters in the mythology of consumption has always been a woman, her image, her body, being used both as a tool and means (Macdonald 101). It is not that women are more beautiful or more desirable than men, but in most cases, women show to be more open to the possibility of being perceived this way (Nigam and Jha 115). After all, today both a woman appearing on screens and in real life still sees herself through the eyes of a man, imagining herself as the object of his desire (Hogg and Garrow 171). In addition, the advertising slogan convinces a woman that she simply cannot help but want to enjoy this product, because she deserves it. Moreover, this desire applies not only to the specific mascara, but also on other goods produced by the brand simultaneously promoting them. By the way, the same principle of mirrored desire is the basis for the work of cosmetics sales through catalogs, which in percentage terms is now one of the most popular types of network marketing, since a woman with a desire to have products formed in her will never buy just one unit.
In this way, women are currently instilled with certain ideals and rules to follow in order to obtain things they strive for. To achieve this, a woman must buy the advertised cosmetics, and this purchase will draw her nearer to perfection in her look. A woman now has a new goal – to look similarly to the face on the screen; she believes that her life will change then, and she will get what was not there before. In addition, she starts sharing new values, interpreting advertisement as guidance on conquering men. Perceiving these clichйs, women soon bring them to life, creating a culture and stable behavior pattern, a certain image of a modern girl. As a result, contemporary promotion culture contributed greatly to the fact that modern women dream of perfect, delicate, smooth and velvety skin, coming together with the multitude of admirers, captivated by their seductive beauty reflecting the ideals of glossy covers. In their essence, the advertising images are significantly simplified and stereotyped, but it is exactly in this form that they affect individuals, causing them not only to consume goods intensively, but also transfer the promoted patterns of gender-role behavior into the real life, while the image of women created by advertisement gets further replicated and spread by the mass culture as a complex form of structuring modern social life.
