In Which Confusion Abounds...

Photography

“Societies vary in the extent of the inequality in social status of their women and men members, but where there is inequality, the status “woman” (and its attendant behavior and role allocations) is usually held in lesser esteem than the status “man.” Since gender is also intertwined with a society’s other constructed statuses of differential evaluation- race, religion, occupation, class, country of origin, and so on- men and women members of the favored groups command more power, more prestige, and more property than the members of the disfavored groups.” –The Social Construction of Gender, Judith Lorber, 1991

In every culture there is some sort of conception of how people should act based on physical characteristics that they possess; while each culture has a unique view of how people should behave, the underlying theme is that of a greater and lesser class. Socioeconomically, those who have more have more power as well. Physically, those that may have more but have not male characteristics are thought of as less. The interesting thing is that even in societies that proclaim themselves to be liberal, equal-minded, progressive, etc, there are still inequalities between the genders, and inequalities abound in groups with characteristics that differ them from the status quo as well. Yet the thing that keeps these portions of the population in non-dominating roles is simply the dominating portions ideas of the way things ought to be (also the title of a Rush Limbaugh book). These ideas are disseminated in various ways, large (laws, a la Jim Crow) or small (one man’s cat call as a representation of how society views women as objects). The way society views a group becomes part of their mindset and is reflected in these large and small ways. In this project, I plan to look at advertisements, because while trying to reach the predominant audience, whether consciously or unconsciously, they say something about how the world is viewed through the eyes of the dominant culture.

“Even the covers of magazines like Vogue, Elle, Glamour, or in this case Cosmopolitan, could be mistaken for the covers of some skin magazines commercially produced and marketed for consumption by heterosexual men were it not for the teasers running down the side that tell us that the image of this woman is intended to function for its female audience not as an object of desire but rather a point of identification.”

Do advertisements reflect the culture or does culture reflect media? I plan to approach my project with advertisements as a reflection of the culture, but it is wholly possible that that the two approaches are so close to one another that it doesn’t matter which way I go. Linking back to the first section, however, there is still the reflection of the dominant society through photography. This quote makes the point that clarification is required as to the intended audience; the way the women are photographed gives a far different idea of the intended audience than one might expect, because the images given are meant to appeal to the dominant society and also to the people trying to adapt and fit into the dominant society’s mindset.

“Sometimes the exhibitionism is coy… in which the model playfully clutches the bottem hem of her knitted dress, ostensibly concealing and protecting the triangular zone from the viewer’s intrusive gaze, but, in so doing, drawing our attention more irresistibly to it.”
Fashion and the Homospectatorial Look
Diana Fuss Critical Inquiry, Vol. 18, No. 4, Identities (Summer, 1992), pp. 713-737

Although language may be an issue, reading into the way people or things in advertisements are posed can give insight into how a culture regards them. These poses could have been adopted conciously or subconciously, but still reflect how people consider the way things are. The "exhibitionism" mentioned above is meant to sell a product using sexuality in a seemingly innocent manner, perhaps a reflection of the cultures views of what they desire.