The Gender of Branding - Literature review Example

A simple sentence like, “television depicts normal life” can be a heavily loaded ment if looked at from a gender perspective. What is normal fora man necessarily need not be the same for a woman. For, example, a woman doing all the daily scores of a household will seem like normal life to a man but for a woman, the same can be sheer drudgery imposed by a patriarchal society. In a market driven society the advertisements, inertly, and many other social discourses overtly, promote consumerism and the main anchorage for any such inert or overt discourse is provided by what is perceived ‘normal’. Hall (2003, p.90) has observed that ideologies merge into and hide inside the taken for granted ‘naturalness’ or ‘commonsense’ and through this, racism and patriarchy begin to appear as ‘natural’. Hall (2003, p.91) in order to prove his point, has drawn attention to certain television shows which advocate racial harmony at macro level but at micro level, is “impregnated with unconscious racism,” depicting certain racist positions as normal, as part of commonsense. The slave figures in Gone With the Wind are cited by Hall (2003, p.92) as a stereotyped yet assumed ‘natural’ symbol of racism. These characters satisfy the gender biases of the given society also. Reminding that all advertisements of Nike historically have been male narratives, Grow (2008) has named the evolution of women’s brands and corresponding advertisements focusing them as ante-narratives. Here, a gender discourse is earning space in a hitherto male textual discourse only because of the spread of consumerism among women, aided by the purchasing capacity that they have which in turn was achieved by becoming part of the labor force. Nike’s masculine brand image was considered normal as long as there were only male consumers but when a female consumer came into the picture, what was ‘normal’ turned out to be a bit less ‘normal’ (Grow, 2008). The female consumer could not associate with the images of masculinity and so the advertisements had to be fine-tuned with a new revised notion of normalcy (Grow, 2008). Wood (2007, p.77-100) has studied certain ‘normal’ discourses in British television talk shows and proved that there are also instances when consumerism is critically negotiated by the evolution of a “mutually constructed text” in television talk shows having majority of female viewers (2007, p.99). There have been opposing positions regarding television talk shows. Wood (2007, p.77) has observed that these positions ranged from notions such as “talk shows offer a feminist and therapeutic alternate public sphere” to that they are “commercial exploitation of voyeurism.” In her study, Wood (2007, p.80) has warned about the common-sense assumptions and those usually followed by the tradition of conversation analysis, which assume a particular kind of speaker/hearer dynamics in a television talk show. She (Wood, 2007, p.84), has drawn attention to the minimal responses that were expressed by female audiences of a television talk show (while they watched it at their home) and has suggested that, as indicated by Coates (1993) in another study, such responses meant that they were asserting their participation and space inside the conversation. In her (Wood, 2007, p.84) study, a talk show expert is seen advocating on television, the need to consult a dermatologist to cure the wrinkles and other skin beauty problems, and a female listener of this talk show is found remarking that one got to be rich to get rid of wrinkles. Using similar examples, Wood (2007, p.90) has argued that though women are conceived as “Mrs. Housewife Consumer”, they do not just swallow the text but produce a negotiated text. This negotiated text questions the ‘normal’ as depicted in the talk show and often arrives at the opposite position. But Wood (2007, p.90) has not concluded that this negotiation process always goes against the encoded message. In her own examples, many women viewers of talk shows are found to endorse the positions of the speakers as well. Hence, it has to be assumed that “Mrs Housewife Consumer” does exist and constitutes a considerable proportion of the women in a given society. According to Wood (2007, p.100) also, there are lots of shifting positions in a viewing experience, and still she has talked of a “discursive potential for the viewer” (Wood, 2007, p.100). This discursive potential is what sabotages the loaded ‘normal life’ that surrounds a woman. But generally, almost all studies related to this topic have found a dictatorship of the ‘normal’ in almost all seller-consumer interactions. In extreme cases where the ‘normal’ might affect the selling potential of a product, the ‘exceptional’ is negotiated into the wider frame work of the ‘normal’ and never the vice versa. Coming back to Grow (2008) and the Nike case study, this process of negotiated normality can be seen emerging. Grow (2008) has stressed upon the nature of the patriarchal society in which Nike’s feminine sub-brands were launched and has reminded such a society preferred femininity to athleticism. By endorsing the normal alone, that is femininity, Nike could expect social approval but could not sell their female sub brands. Grow (2008) has called what has emerged out of this conflict, a negotiated text. Grow (2008) also has cited an example for this in Anna Kournikova-ads, endorsing multiple products in which she displays “her highly sexualized femininity over her less competitive athletic abilities.” Such an advertisement finds its mass appeal in the ‘normalcy’ of depiction of a female. A solely athletic depiction on the other hand must have interrupted this ‘normalcy’. Kilbourne (1990) has stated that apart from products, “images, …concepts of success and worth, love and sexuality (and) popularity”, ads also sell “normalcy”. Kilbourne’s (1990) notion of normalcy can be correlated with the stereotypes which she has said, presents a “mostly white world in which people are rarely ugly, overweight, poor, struggling or disabled, either physically or mentally (unless you count the housewives who talk to little men in toilet bowls).” In this stereotype, there is no space for the real woman who is most probably depressed, complaining, revolting or painfully submissive. According to her (Kilbourne, 1990) analysis of advertisement texts, a normal woman is either a house wife or a sex object. She (Kilbourne, 1990) has described this housewife further as someone “pathologically obsessed by cleanliness, (who) debates the virtues of cleaning products with herself and (who) worries about "ring around the collar." Kilbourne (1990) has added a question here: “but no one ever asks why he doesnt wash his neck.” Such a question is against ‘normality’ and absurd for a society which accepts that notion of ‘normality’. On the other hand, for the sex object, reproaches Kilbourne (1990), “conventional beauty is …(the) only attribute.” Kilbourne (1990) has also revealed in her study that a woman feeling herself underweight or overweight (out of the psychological pressure from the texts depicting conventional beauty as the ideal model) has a great value for consumerism and advertising. Such manipulated feelings of inferiority are the base for the multi-billion dollar cosmetic industry (Kilbourne, 1990). And a woman often painfully finds out the reality that what is depicted as normal is costly and almost unachievable. Kilbourne (1990) also has criticized the superwoman image promoted by advertisements. A superwoman is one who “manages to do all the work at home and on the job” (Kilbourne, 1990) which also is not the reality. Thus in all spheres and in all discourses, consumerism asserts a ‘normalcy’, which is designed for the convenience of the male. It creates a strange situation where, women consumers are made to believe a double articulation- primarily, they are told that as women, they are in a subordinate position to men and secondly, in order to assert this position, they ought to buy a particular product. The logical contradiction is evident. It is just like asking a slave to buy a chain so that her master can keep her tied strong. The sad thing is that the slave often does exactly the same. References Grow, J.M., (September 22 2008) The Gender of Branding: Early Nike Women’s Advertising a feminist antenarrative, in Women’s Studies in Communication, Retrieved from http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-189653396/gender-branding- early-nike.html Hall, S. (2003) The White of Their Eyes: Racist Ideologies and the Media, in Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text Reader, (Eds.) Gail Dines and Jean McMohan Humez, SAGE. Kilbourne, J. (1990) Beauty….and the Beast of Advertising, in Media and Values, Issue #49 Winter, Retrieved from http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article40.html Wood, H. (2007) The Mediated Conversational Floor: An Interactive Approach to Audience Reception Analysis, in Media Culture Society, 2007; 29; 75, SAGE, DOI: 10.1177/0163443706072000. Read More