Puffs and Suds: analysing the advertising in Woman magazine (1964)

Symbolic annihilation - where a group is completely excluded from a media product 

Introduction - advertising is essential to producing magazines (five minutes)

Task: Please read this information carefully, and copy and paste it in to your blogs

For many audience members, adverts are annoying, But for many media producers, adverts are essential. Without advertising, it would usually not be possible to produce and distribute media products. 

About 30% of a magazine's revenue in 1964 would come from advertising. This is huge. Without this revenue, the cover price would have to be increased significantly, which in tern would lead to lower sales And, while there are other ways in which print magazines can create revenue in the 21st century, print advertising is still essential.

For magazines like Woman, advertisers would pay a premium to advertise in the magazine. Why? Because it sells an absolutely massive amount, and it sells to a dedicated audience. We keep discussing how the target audience for Woman is 

• White
• Working class
• British
• Middle aged
• Heterosexual
• Women

That's pretty specific. Additionally, around 1964, Woman magazine sold approx. 3million copies a week. In terms of reach, this is incredible. Therefore, advertisers will pay a massive premium in order to target such a specific audience

Starter Van Zoonen and hooks (five minutes)

Task: Use your notes and the theories and theorists section to briefly revise these two feminist theorists, and make three bullet points for both of them. Keep it basic. 

Here's a starter:

Van Zoonen 

• Representations of men and women are constructed through media language

bell hooks

• The representation of women becomes more complex if they belong to different groups

Main 1 - Crème Puff (forty minutes)

Audience positioning is where the audience are placed in a media product, using techniques such as mise-en-scene and shot types. Are we near or are we far? Who are we positioned with? And what does this mean?

Q1 - How are the target audience positioned in this scene? Make reference to media language

Van Zoonen argues that media language is used to construct male and female representations in different ways in media products

Q2 - Check out the textual analysis toolkit (this should always be open anyway!) and note at least three ways that men and women are represented differently in this advert. It's like Spot The Difference but you're 17...

Van-Zoonen also argues women’s bodies are used in media products as a spectacle for heterosexual male audiences, which reinforces patriarchal hegemony. Patriarchal hegemony, simply put, is the hegemonic expectations of women in society as reinforced by men who occupy power

Q3 - In what ways can it be argued that this advert encodes ideologies of patriarchal hegemony? How do you know? And why is this important?

Main 2 - Breeze Soap (forty minutes)

Positioning is essential for advertising! For the next question, ONLY make reference to lexis, i.e the choice of language. For example, "because you are a woman..."

Q1 - Explore how this advert uses lexis to position it's target audience

We talk a lot about sexualisation in media. But it is essential to be as specific as possible in your answer. "the model is attractive and naked" will NOT cut it here. Use the toolkit!

Q2 - This advert uses a frankly sexualised representation of a woman in order to appeal to it's target audience. First of all, we must be as specific as possible. Using the textual analysis toolkit, list all the ways in which this model is encoded as being sexually attractive

bell hooks argues that feminism is for everyone, and the representation of woman affects the representation of everyone. We could argue that the woman is hegemonically sexually attractive... but what assumptions are we making here? And who does this harm?

Q3 - Using bell hook's theory of intersectional feminism, explore how the representation of this woman could be harmful to certain women. Again, make explicit reference to media language