Gloria Steinem's "Sex, Lies, and Advertising" explains how feminist magazine MS Magazine faced unforeseen challenges due to the way sexism permeates all aspects of culture including advertising strategies and misconceptions. MS struggled to remain profitable because they refused to write advertising editorial that many advertisers require from women's magazines before they will buy ad space. MS magazine also sought to obtain advertisers not traditionally targeting women such as financing, business, and car companies. Steinem argues that these companies affect women's lives as well and though not considered feminine women are still interested in the products these companies have to offer. However, MS faced extreme difficulty in getting these companies to buy ad space.
Women's magazines face pressures and expectations from ad companies not comparable to other media forms. This can be seen in Steinem's conversation with a potential client, Este Lauder. The owner said that since MS did not feature enough articles about beauty products; this inhibited him from advertising his beauty product. Steinem points out the double standard that Este Lauder advertises its shaving line in men's magazines without complimentary articles about shaving.
She concludes that advertisers have too much power over content and that this inhibits the goals of women's magazines and forces them into an consumerist focused mold. She ends by petitioning readers to change this system.
Joan Brumberg's "Body Projects" looks at the way women's relationship with their body has changed over the years. She begins with the idea that for many people, the body is the tangible representation of the soul, or the self. This can be damaging because then when one does not like their body, they do not like themselves. She then looks at different historical movements that prize different body types beginning with the "Century of Svelte." Svelte refers to being thin and small. In the 1920s and the days of flappers, flat chested, slight, long-legged individuals were prized. This began women's new relationship with food as evidenced by diaries that lamented college weight gain rather then celebrating the abundance of food. Brumberg uses anecdotal evidence here via a look into a contemporary girls' diary which explained at one point she was eating only 50 calories a day (p. 103).
Brumberg then explores how in the 1920s another trend emerged where "girls understood that their bodies were in some ways a public project" (p. 107).
Following this obsession with thinness an obsession with breasts was added. Brumberg explores the emergence of first the bra and then the training bra as tools to preserve the aesthetic and reproductive value of these features. As the bra, and in fact all clothing, began to be made primarily in department stores more pressure was placed on women to fit into clothing. Previously, clothing was made to fit you regardless of your shape. This perpetuated the concept of the ideal or normal woman's shape.
Now an added dimension of the ideal women involves being muscular and fit. This particularly involved the thighs. Shockingly, in 1982 one girl was kicked off her marching band because at 5'4" and 124 lb. she was considered to be too fat. This is the same high school where fans were known to chant "thunder thighs" at performers. Brumberg ends her discussion with a look at piercings.
Her overall argument is that the phenomena described confuse the private and public aspects of the body. Since body is equated with identity, when the body undergoes public scrutiny and control so does ones identity. This can be harmful and confusing.
This connects to "Our Bodies, Ourselves" by showing how a positive understanding of ones physical body is empowering. This is thwarted by consumerism and advertising agenda that makes women feel the need to buy products to change their bodies. Advertisers pitch that this will make women comfortable and confident, but it requires women to give up some of their agency and subject their bodies, and therefore identities, to the whim of the market and to others control.
This can be seen in images such as the one below where women's bodies are represented as only being attractive when they match a particular ideal. The pressures women to match this ideal though it may not actually be part of their identity. This places women's bodies under public scrutiny and public control.
Gloria Steinem talks about how MS magazine faced many challenges when it came to advertising because they refused to comply with the socially acceptable way that women’s magazines usually advertised. MS magazine ran into problems because they were not willing to write advertising editorials that were essentially for companies to buy ad space in their magazine. MS magazine did not think that they should have to ‘devalue’ their women’s magazine with ad editorials simply to appease companies who might buy ads. They also wanted to advertise things like cars, finance, etc, which are primarily seen as advertisements for men. Basically, MS magazine was trying to go against social norms in terms of advertising and as a result they ran into many problems and were unsuccessful. However difficult and anti-feminist it may be that these social norms exist, they do, and to make money magazines and other media sources have to accept it. This reminds me of the conversation we had in class about why women are the spokespeople for laundry detergent and products like this and men are the spokespeople for cars and products like this. It seems, and may be, unfair and sexist but it is simply what needs to happen for a product to be successfully marketed.
ReplyDeleteThe Joan Brumberg article was very interesting especially after the lists we made in class on Tuesday about women’s bodies. It talks about a woman’s body in the public and private sphere. It is interesting that all of the societal norms when it comes to women’s bodies that we talked about in class go much further than just appearance. If a women is not comfortable with her body, it translate directly to how she feels about herself. This is very troubling because the norms that society sets for women are almost impossible to achieve, which makes it very difficult for women to be happy with themselves.
Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, Our Bodies, Ourselves
ReplyDeleteReading this article I began to think about past generations of women in my family and how my life differs from theirs. I immediately thought of my great grandmother who had thirteen children. Her destiny was in part determined by her biology. I on the other hand, have a freedom that she did not have. I can choose when I want to have children. Moreover, with the availability of contraception’s, today females do not need to stress about the possibility of pregnancy as their grandparents did.
The Body Project
It is crazy how normal obsessing over your body has become for American women. In my opinion, obsession, in itself, has a negative connotation. In this article, obsession is seen as unhealthy. This is exemplified by the excessive monitoring of weight and bust sizes of women and young girls. From training bras for girls to butt pads, I just wonder what’s next.
“Sex, Lies & Advertising” by Gloria Steinem
I rarely pick up magazines geared towards women, or magazines in general for that matter, but on the rare occasions that I do, I’ve realized that they are littered with more advertisements than articles. Before reading, “Sex, Lies and Advertising” by Gloria Steinman, I had no idea how much advertisers dictate the content of women’s magazines. It was discomforting to see how many rules advertisers had for magazines and how much double standards played a crucial role in advertising. For instance, while food companies required advertisements with recipes in Ms.’s spreads, the same companies did not require them in People magazine. The question at hand seems to be, why are feminist magazines or women’s magazines subjected to such scrutiny?