Through the Looking Glass pt. 2

The third chapter, Spectatorship, Power, and Knowledge, provides much insight on the visual roles/identities of males and females. While reading this chapter I began to contemplate the question that has been of much debate: Does sex in advertising sell? This is a very important question even to those not interested in advertising because it boils down to what role should you put males and females in visually.

The answer to this question is difficult to obtain. I believe this all depends on the social contexts you are operating under. For instance, women have been the object of gaze for centuries, but recently there has been a movement by women not to be objectified. I am reminded of a campaign put together by Dove a few years back that shows this shift in thinking among the public.



These are ads for Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty which portray women in very nontraditional ways. First, these are not the normal types of women you would see in an advertisement, especially for one attempting to sell cosmetics. Second, the women are looking at the camera, completely aware of the "gaze" mentioned in the third chapter. This ad does a good job conveying the message that Dove products are not just for supermodels, but for housewives, professionals, etc. This campaign has won numerous awards and was extremely effective.

So does sex sell? Well maybe if your audience is adolescent boys, but not if it is the educated public. That just is not effective anymore.

The visual landscape is also changing thanks to the ability to reproduce images. While images once spoke to a specific moment in time, the ability to reproduce images from the past has not only allowed us to see images from the past but also place those images in a new context. It has become increasingly difficult to produce a timeless image (one that will have the same meaning now and in the future).

What meaning does this image convey now? What possible messages could this image convey in 5 years, 10 years, 50 years?