Ad #1 - 'JOY' by Christian Dior starring Jennifer Lawrence (Sept. 1st, 2018)
Ad #2 - 'J'adore' by Christian Dior (Oct. 28th, 2018)
Ad #3 - 'Parfums For Her' by Karl Lagerfeld (2014)
Analysis:
Each of these selected ads above are quite recent depictions of gender
portrayal in our world. The first ad is Christian Dior’s new fragrance ‘JOY’
introduced on September 1st, 2018 and revolves around the actress,
Jennifer Lawrence, as she swims around the pool and poses seductively for the
camera. She is not seen using the product, the perfume, has no speaking role
within the advertisement and wears a revealing swimsuit and dress. This allows
the woman in the advert to have a decorative portrayal that is mainly
submissive and sexually attractive. This emphasizes how, in this society, a
woman is portrayed as beautiful with a thin body with clothing that is more
revealing and, through this ad, advertisers are trying to express the message
to women that if they purchase this product then they, too, can reach society’s
standards of ‘beauty’. This specifically shows how important society has made
this image of ‘beauty’ for women to follow rather than focus on celebrating all
types of women, no matter the shape, size, color, nationality or even style.
This message is also heavily conveyed through Dior’s later released perfume
‘J’adore’, which was released on October 28th, 2018. It starts off
with a golden-tiled bath chamber filled with multiple women in revealing
dresses modelling around the chamber in submissive, ‘sexy’ poses while the main
actress is seen within the bathtub. The main actress is focused on as she walks
out of the bath and the chamber itself, followed by her entourage of women but
is not seen using the product, the perfume. She, alike Jennifer Lawrence, is
used as a decorative portrayal in the ad and is, therefore, turned into an
object. Alike the ‘JOY’ ad, women are stereotyped as submissive and held to an
impossible standard of ‘beauty’ by society. Although, this ad takes this image
further to where the blond-haired female was seen as the ‘main’ whereas the
brunettes and dark-haired girls trailed behind her as ‘backups’, showing how
blond-haired females are perceived as more beautiful society. The last ad is by
Karl Lagerfeld for their fragrance 'Parfums For Her', which is aimed at women. This ad poster was made in 2014
and, alike the previous ads by Dior, this woman is also a decorative portrayal
of society’s standard of ‘beauty’. She, unlike the other ads, models with a
male model who is shown as the ‘dominant’ in the photo with her in a submissive
pose, showing how women are shown to be ‘weaker and more ladylike’. It is most
likely that the advertisers for each of these ads had ‘effectively’, in their
minds, used the role-product congruity theory where advertising effectiveness
can be increased when ‘appropriate’ models are used, in this case, the thin,
white and young females for the perfume ads. These women express the standard
of ‘beauty’ in our society and help to keep gender stereotypes alive, no matter
how insulting or incorrect.
This is very well written and shows a clea understanding of the different ads you have selected. I enjoyed reading this post because you looked at the detail of the adverts and noiced that even, in the second advert, the brunettes were behind the blonde woman. It is also true tha society portrays women as objects and often set the bar for beauty far too high thus creating unrealistic for viewers and the target adiences of the product. Even in the last advert the man standing behind the women seems to have some sort of a lust for the women while the women looks submissive and 'weak'. weak in the sense that she would give in easly and that she doesnt seem to carry any real power.
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