Inhaltsverzeichnis

Abbildungsverzeichnis

1.Introduction

2 Definitions of Sex, Gender and Stereotypes

2.1 Sex

2.2 Gender

2.3 Stereotypes

3 General Information on Advertisement

3.1 A Brief History of Advertisements

3.2 Print Advertisements

4 An Analysis of Print Advertisements

4.1 The Magazines Cosmopolitan and Esquire

4.2 Gender Constructions in Cosmopolitan Advertisements

4.2.1 Advertisements from the 1980s

4.2.2 Advertisements from the 1990s

4.2.3 Advertisements from the 2000s

4.2.4 Advertisements from the 2010s

4.3 Gender Constructions in Esquire Advertisements

4.3.1 Advertisements from the 1980s

4.3.2 Advertisements from the 1990s

4.3.3 Advertisements from the 2000s

4.3.4 Advertisements from the 2010s

4.4 The Development of the Portrayal of Women

4.5 The Development of the Portrayal of Men

4.6 The Depiction of Women in Comparison with the Depiction of Men

5 Conclusion and Outlook

6 Works Cited

Abbildungsverzeichnis

Illustration 1: Media/Society Continuum: Media and Society Are Interdependent.

Illustration 2: Cover of the May 1896 Issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine.

Illustration 3: Cover of the Autumn 1933 Issue of Esquire Magazine.

Illustration 4: Flame Glo Hours-Longer Lipstick Advertisement.

Illustration 5: L'Oréal Le Pout Advertisement.

Illustration 6: Secret Solid Advertisement.

Illustration 7: Jōvan Musk Advertisement.

Illustration 8: Lady Stetson Advertisement.

Illustration 9: Dep Advertisement.

Illustration 10: Candie's Advertisement.

Illustration 11: Clairol Only Ultress Hair Colour Maximizer Advertisement.

Illustration 12: L’Oréal Studio Line FX Melting Gel Advertisement.

Illustration 13: Revlon Colorstay Collection Advertisement.

Illustration 14: Garnier Fructis Advertisement.

Illustration 15: Michael Kors Wonderlust Advertisement.

Illustration 16: Roffler Advertisement.

Illustration 17: Head & Shoulders Advertisement.

Illustration 18: Aramis Advertisement.

Illustration 19: Pierre Cardin Advertisement.

Illustration 20: Calvin Klein Obsession Advertisement.

Illustration 21: Canoe Advertisement.

Illustration 22: Calvin Klein Eternity Advertisement.

Illustration 23: Givenchy Pour Homme Advertisement.

Illustration 24: Edge ActiveCare Advertisement.

Illustration 25: Marc Jacobs Bang.

Illustration 26: Dolce & Gabbana The One.

Illustration 27: Givenchy Gentlemen Only Advertisement.

1.Introduction

“ADVERTISING PEOPLE WHO IGNORE RESEARCH ARE AS DANGEROUS AS GENERALS WHO IGNORE DECODES OF ENEMY SIGNALS.” – David Ogilvy

Advertising is everywhere in our contemporary society. We find it in our home, when we walk down the street or when we are at the bus station. Advertising is always with us, no matter where we are or who is with us (cf. Cook 1). Although we are aware of the constant bombarding by advertisers everywhere we go, we hardly recognize the influence that advertising has on us (cf. Mayne 56). Thereby, advertising has a great influence on us as individuals and on the society as a whole (cf. Cramer 1). With help of the media, we make sense of our cultural identities (cf. Cramer 221; Hodkinson 1) and “gender and sexuality remain at the core of how we think about our identities” (Gauntlett 1). This is why I am going to study on the topic of gender stereotyping in U.S. American print advertisements in my master thesis.

Since the 1950s, there has been an increased focus on gender stereotypes in advertisements and on its social consequences (cf. Alpert 73; Cohen 24-25). By the 1960s and 1970s, many activist groups already began protesting against these stereotypes (cf. Courtney & Whipple 162). Today, many books and dissertations have been written about the portrayal of gender in advertising and on the influence it has on society (cf. Courtney & Whipple 31; Eisend & Plagemann & Sollwedel 256; Hepp 58). However, most studies of gender portrayal in the media focus on the construction of femininity (cf. Kervin 51), whereas I will to pay attention to both, masculinity and femininity.

The central goal of this master thesis is to examine the development of presentations of gender stereotypes in print advertisements over a time period of 40 years via content analysis of a sample of magazine advertisements. In other words, the key questions are: How do U.S. print advertisements construct gender stereotypes, how did these stereotypes develop and do they have an influence on the consumer and the U.S. culture? Because content analyses have been proven in decades of research on gender stereotyping as it relates to the mass media (cf. Busby 127; Lin & Yeh 61) and because this is an appropriate method to not only focus on images, but also on verbal messages, I have chosen this kind of method for my study.^{^{^[1]}} Because magazines present an especially enduring, popular medium (cf. Gill 180), I am going to focus on gender stereotypes in print advertisements of magazines. Furthermore, I chose the magazines Cosmopolitan and Esquire due to the varying target audiences, meaning females and males respectively, and because they might be a potential indicator of U.S. magazine advertising in general (cf. Helgeson & Mager 239). To further limit the object of investigation and because these advertisements are useful for my research purposes, I decided to concentrate on beauty product advertisements.

To answer the key questions of this paper, I will first explain the phenomenon of sex, gender and stereotyping. Because I do not only want to have a theoretical background of these aspects, but also of advertising itself, I will further outline general information on advertisement, with focus on the history of advertisements and the characteristics of print advertisements. Then I will go on analyzing gender constructions in print advertisements of Cosmopolitan and Esquire magazines in a time period from the 1980s until the 2010s. For the analysis part of this thesis, I am going to use the major work Gender Advertisements by the “widely quoted authority on the subject of women and advertising” (cf. Tjernlund & Wiles & Wiles 38) Erving Goffman. In a last step, I will look at the development of the portrayal of each gender and then compare them with each other. Finally, I am going to give a conclusion of this master thesis with reference to the depicted key questions.