Men act, women appear? The cultivation of patriarchal hegemonic values in a Marks & Spencer display

John Berger suggested in his (highly recommended) book Ways of Seeing that men and women take on radically different roles in media products. While men are represented as active, able and important, women generally do not influence the narrative, and appear only to appeal to a heterosexual male audience. Liesbet Van-Zoonen explores this idea further in Feminist Media Studies, comparing the intradiegetic gaze (that is the way in which other characters look at each other) and the respective movements and physicality of male and female characters. Van-Zoonen also explores Laura Mulvey's suggestion that the primary function of women in media products is to appeal to a 'default' heterosexual male audience. This assumption of the audience being straight and male is an example of heteronormativity, as well as an example of patriarchal hegemony.

So men and women fulfil different roles in media products. And this is something we all know. But how is this important to our everyday lives. As Stuart Hall argues, media representations influence the ways in which groups are treated in our society. And George Gerbner explored how being constantly exposed to an ideology can manipulate our own view of the world, influencing our dominant ideology and what we consider to be 'normal'.

I've name checked a lot of theorists here,  and a good example of that links to each of their theoretical perspectives is the image below:

Image via @filia_charity on Twitter. Click to see full size.

What assumptions has the producer (in this case the manager of the shop and the team who assembled the window display) made about men and women? What expectations and roles are men and women expected to conform to? Why was there an online backlash to this display? And what would the dominant response be if the gender roles of this display were reversed?

Check out this article on The Guardian for more images and details on online responses by feminist groups  to this display.