Women & Men in Advertising

"Advertising sells much more than products; it sells values and cultural representations, such as success and sexuality..."- Cortese

Walking down 58th on the way to an appointment, I was pondering all of the different information we have been reading on women and how they are portrayed in the media. I was considering what images I would choose for my blog entry, when I came across a sidewalk vendor selling signs including the image above. I thought that this was a perfect way to show the use of women's sexuality in order to sell Red-Rock Cola. The slogan, "The right bait for any angler," is a double-entendre; as it refers not only to using red-rock cola as bait to obtain the desired woman's sexuality, it also refers to the fact that she is also angling and uses red-rock as bait too...

In this image, I thought it was particularly interesting how the woman's dress had changed as if to show that Coca-Cola has "progressed" from the uptight sort of dowdy woman to the left in 1886 who is completely covered for taking a swim, to the free and "liberated" woman to the right in 1936 who is showing much skin & has a nude-colored bathing suit to further enhance her sexual appeal. It is telling us that Coca-Cola is the key to being progressive, pretty, sexual, and happy (as the girl in 1886 doesn't look as happy as the one in 1936). See what 50 years of soft drinks, and advocacy advertising can do for women?!

This image is clearly inviting in a sexual way. She is not merely saying "yes" to a soda, but to whatever the man who is handing it to her is offering. This gives the impression that if you offer a girl a coca-cola, she will say "yes" to whatever you ask of her. Given the time frame of these photos (circa 1950) this is quite suggestive of that era.

Finally, Coca-Cola was not the only brand name to use suggestive or advocacy advertising to sell their products. Here are other advertisements which show men being used to sell drinks. In Lucky's Bar, you can get the, "best head in town." This could be intended for both men and women at the time. In the ad next to it, if you are rugged and handsome in the James Dean sort of misunderstood way, you should drink KISI. His sexuality and brazenness is apparent and would definitely appeal to women who would want to be with him, and men who would want to be him.

Advertising is a powerful tool that shapes our perceptions on what reality really is. Millions of dollars are spent to manufacture our consent (as Noam Chomsky has written extensively about), and we are left to sift through the messages, moral, images, and meanings in order to decipher how we want to shape our reality. Instinctively, we know that drinking coca-cola will not make us look like the buxom woman perched on the beach. However, somewhere deep inside us is the desire to be something other than ourselves, and advertisers feed on that need until we use their products to try to attain the unattainable.

The alternative to all of these messages is if our society took a large injection of self-esteem and did not buy into these negative images and messages. By purchasing the products, and wearing the labels, we are endorsing the companys' ad campaigns, and ultimately their deeper societal messages. As Dyer is quoted in Wykes/Gunter, "How social groups are treated in cultural representation is...how they are treated in life..." Therefore, if we allow negative images to invade our media "reality," they in term become mirrored in our actual reality.

Why do advertisers use this tactic? Because we buy it. If children were taught at a young age to decipher these messages for what they are (and some are) then they will not spend money on the products and the advertisers would have to change their agenda. We must teach our society at a young age to become media literate, so that we can transform our advertising images into something positive and beneficial, rather than negative and destructive.

(All photos are taken of signs being sold by a street vendor on 58th & Lexington, and cannot be attributed to any one artist or photographer).