INTERNATIONAL MULTIDISCIPLINARY SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE ON SOCIAL SCIENCES AND ARTS SGEM2015 PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY, SOCIOLOGY AND HEALTHCARE, EDUCATION CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS VOLUME I PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY SOCIOLOGY AND HEALTHCARE 26 August - 1 September, 2015 Albena, BULGARIASection Sociology and Healthcare REPRESENTATION OF FEMINITY IN ADVERTISING IMAGES: A VISUAL. ANALY Assist. Prof. Dr. Zorana Suljug Vuéica! Assist. Prof. Dr. Marija Lonéar Assist. Prof. Dr. Magdalena Nigoevié ' Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences/University in Split, Croatia ABSTRACT Visual images in contemporary advertising significantly contribute to the way people perceive their gender identities. Gender identities are not only presented and reflected but are again resented through the interplay of various visual elements. Thus, lifestyle magazines have important role in the construction of feminity either in stereotypical or in new ways. Although various researches have shown that women are pictured in traditional modes some analyses indicate that presentation of feminity depends on various social factors as well as on the contexts in which advertisements can be “read’ However, gender images remain central to the world of advertising and most of the products are difficult to conceive without them, The aim of the study was to analyse the ways feminity is constructed through the representations of female bodies and other visual elements in women’s and men’s lifestyle magazines in Croatia. We also focus on the ways female body images relate to the male and to the product/service images, as well as to the advertising imagery. Therefore, the aim was to analyse how advertisements produce and manipulate with various social signifiers, Most of the advertisements are combinations of old and new representational signs of feminity. Nevertheless, interactions of gender identity, consumption, and representation have stronger and stronger impact on the promotion of vast spectrum of products to a range of consumers. Keywords: visual analysis, feminity, images, advertising, magazines. 1, INTRODUCTION: The role of advertisements in constructing feminity Media have the most prevailing and powerful influences on the ways men and women are perceived. Nevertheless, women and men often derive their sense of gender identity from representation in media. Gauntlett underlines the importance of analysing the relationship among media, gender and identity. Some concepts like identity, audience, etc. have changed over time, but then again “with the media containing so many images of women and men, and messages about men, women and sexuality today, it is highly unlikely that these ideas would have no impact on our sense of identity” (Gauntlet, 2008, 1). Various forms of media, especially advertisements, communicate images of the sexes usually maintaining stereotypical, unrealistic, or even limiting perceptions. Social consequences of using male/female idealised bodies can be seen in one’s conscious or 761ocial Sciences and Arts AS M 2015 internal rence on ‘al Multidisciplinary Scientific Conf unconscious desires to be identified with men/women images in advertisements, whigf are usually never completely fulfilled. Critics claim that consumers are left with haunting images of perfection and wealth and the increasingly desperate awareness they will never achieve the idealised state depicted in advertising (Richins, 1991, 7)), Goffman (1979, 84) pointed that advertisements are ‘hyper-ritualizations’ because the draw upon the same corpus of displays in everyday life rendering it and making i natural and readable. Cultural codes constrain how brands work to produce meanis Therefore, visual representations in advertisements can be considered as socio-politicat artefacts, creating meaning within the culture and beyond strategic intention, invoking & range of issues that should be reserved for the political and public sphere and widely circulating information about the social world. 5 The way advertisements represent gender is usually approached in three ways, fi women are underrepresented falsely implying that men are the cultural standard in societies. Second, men and women are portrayed in stereotypical ways that reflect sustain socially accepted views on gender. Third, represented relationships betw and women in media emphasize traditional roles through men’s physical, psycholo or financial dominance over women and normalise violence against women (Wed 2009, 258-259). In that sense, advertising, as the most dominant way of communica and reality are not separate. Advertisements are influenced and shaped by reality aud the same time they construct the reality they represent through communicating st and cultural aspects in a particular society. In studying advertisements, social researchers put special emphasis on visual im Visual imagery conveys meanings as efficiently as its verbal counterpart, thus haviitl great and powerful influences on the way people behave, their attitudes, feelings -seliiis or values. Advertisements can be approached as displays of “natural” expressions gender represented through visually accessible styles of behaviour (Goffman, 1979, 88% Therefore, images are associated with the ways women are treated, with their socis expected and accepted behaviour and appearance, as well as with ideas of constitutes masculinity and feminity in certain cultures (Lindner, 2004, 419). Goffman (1979) conducted the analysis of visual images in advertisements that aimed at displaying gender differences, roles, relations and stereotypes through focusi on visual clues such as facial expressions, head postures, sizes, positioning, etc. of and female bodies in advertisements. According to these clues, he constructed a co scheme that included the following categories: relative size, function ranking, femiti touch, ritualization of subordination and licenced withdrawal. His analysis illustra how advertisements function in depicting man and woman relations and stereot from the real life. He argues that advertisements construct the ideals of masculinity 4 feminity portraying women in stereotypical ways, in submissive or family roles of lower physical and social positions than men. 7 Since Goffman’s work, position of many women in different societies may improved, especially regarding education, occupation, family relations, etc. Th of Goffman’s categories and conclusions. But the process of changing the tradi roles of women in advertising images proves to be very slow (Kang, I! Advertisements in magazines still portray women in stereotypical way, even the some social changes can be noticed. For example, there are trends of slow decrease a 762sociology and Healthcare male/female ratio regarding some of Goffman’s categories such as relative size or function ranking. In most modern business advertisements, function ranking seems to have disappeared, since men and women are rarely shown in a social hierarchy (Kang, 1997). Some of these trends depend on advertisements” genre (Bell, Milic, 2002, 219), aimed audience or type of magazine in which the analysed advertisements are included (Lindner, 2004, 418). On the other hand, different ways of representing women also appear (such as for example sexiest women images). Some research findings in 1990s and at the beginning of the 21 century showed that advertising industry became more interested in sexually explicit and provocative portraying of women than twenty years before (Kang, 1997; Plakoyiannaki et al., 2008). 2, METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THE STUDY . This study is a part of a larger project dealing with the analysis of advertisement discourse. The project is organised in several stages. Previously, we conducted a qualitative content analysis and discourse analysis of advertisements’, which allowed us to construct coding scheme used in this analysis. The meaning of advertisements is created in encounters between image, text and context, but visual images carry a great deal of responsibility for the message decoding in an advertisement (Kang, 1997). Therefore, in this paper, we started from visual elements as central in the representation of feminity in advertisements and the point that all other elements (such as texts and images of products/services) are constructed on the base of female/male images. Since the coding scheme was already created we applied it (tested it) on the selected material using visual content analysis. Visual content analysis is a systematic, observational method used for testing hypotheses about the ways in which the media represent people, events, situations, and so forth. It allows quantification of samples of observable content classified into distinct categories. It does not analyse individual images or individual ‘visual texts’ (compared with psychoanalytical analysis and semiotic methods). Instead, it allows description of fields of visual representation by describing the constituents of one or more defined areas of representation periods or types of images (Bell, 2001, 14). : : ) Therefore, the research aims were to describe characteristics of advertisements with female and male body images such as types of products, elements of advertisements (further ‘ads’) and their composition in lifestyle magazines. The second aim was to describe images of men and women represented in magazines through body appearance and body-product relationship. The third one was to analyse how these characteristics are distributed in men’s and women’s magazines and according to male and female bodies. Therefore, our hypothesis was that there would be differences between men’s and women’s magazines and sexes regarding characteristic of body appearances and other visual elements in ads. Finally, the aim was to determine important elements in the construction of feminity. 2 This pert of the study will be published by the end of 2015 (Media Representations of the Human Body Discourse Analysis of Advertisements, Kyarypa/Culture) 163SGEM 2015 International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on Social Sciences and Arts. The sample was structured in the way that allowed us to compare elements of masculinity and feminity in different audience magazines. Thus we included Cosmopolitan as female-audience magazine and Men’s Health and Playboy as male. audience magazines, In the magazines, we selected and analysed ail ads containing one! or two body images (male, female, male and female, male and male, female and female) published from January 2012 till December 2013. The overall sample included 535 ads with 638 body image(s) (387 bodies in Cosmopolitan, 128 bodies in Men's Health and 123 in Playboy) and 410 product slogans. There were 393 female images and 245 malef images analysed. These magazines are published for Croatian market and contain ads for foreign brands as well as those for domestic brands. 3. DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION The following sets of data include the ways feminity is constructed through representations of female bodies and other visual elements in woman’s and mat: lifestyle magazines, as well as the ways female body images relate to the male and the product images, and to the viewer. 3.4. Types of ads According to the type of advertised products, services or objects, the analysis indicalél the difference between these two types of magazines. Female magazines usualld advertise cosmetics, hygiene or other-medicaments (41%), fashion — clothes, sho accessories (17%) or shopping centres (6%). On the other hand, male audien magazines usually advertise fashion — clothes, shoes, accessories (28%) and nutrition’ food, drink, food supplements or oral medicaments (15%). Furthermore, ads for medi services and vehicles are present to a greater extent in male audience magazines that, analyzed female audience magazines. If we consider male-female variables and types of ads, then women images are usual/q present in ads for cosmetics, hygiene and medicaments for external use (39%) or!ig fashion ads (19%). Women images are not used in car or motor ads in won magazines, but are present in men’s magazines. Ads for shopping centres, cle products and catering industry use only women images. Male images (26%) mostly in fashion ads and nutrition — food, drink, food supplements or oral medican ads (14%). Since ads in women’s magazines have more female images and 3.2. Types of body appearances Analysis of specific body appearances and relationship to visual elements in ads cal indicate how different type of magazines represent and create body images, suggesting the “gender frame” in which every women or men should “fit”. are targeting at women and men containing advice on how to look, live or interact w one another, so “it must all sink in somewhere” (Gauntlett, 2008, 3). It is not surprisifig that our analysis showed differences in presenting male and female sex (92=146.404 df=1, p<0.01) regarding the target audience of chosen magazines. Accordingly, Playbol and Men's Health ads had more men, while women prevailed in most of the ads'if Cosmopolitan. 764Section Sociology and Healthcare Analysed ads included more than a half of female bodies (61.6%) and more than a third of male bodies (38.4%). As far as the distribution of age is concerned, a half of the images presented bodies aged 30-44 (50.5%), while more than a quarter showed young bodies aged between 15-29 (29.2%). Men and women above 45 years of age occurred in ads less frequently. Interestingly, white race prevailed in 94.8% of analysed ads. Concerning the body parts, upper bodies (50.9%) and whole bodies (28.5%) are presented more frequently than other parts of the body (like head, face, arms, lees, preast/torso, back etc.). Furthermore, out of total number of analysed bodies more than a half of bodies are dressed (65%), while less than a quarter of bodies are either naked (18.7%) or half naked (16.3%). However, there are no differences concerning the type of clothes and the type of magazines (q2=4.909; df=2; p>0.01). Both men’s and women’s magazines presented bodies as dressed or (half) naked. On the other hand, there are differences regarding sex (210.095; df=2; p<0.01), meaning that more men than women in ads are presented with clothes, while more women than men are half naked. ‘Ads are a “potent source” of body images that present and project what is considered to "be social and cultural standards of “ideal body” (Serdar, 2005). As such, they suggest that slimness and attractiveness is something that every woman should consider as ideal. ‘Thus, we analysed some of the characteristics of body appearances such as muscularity, firmness, slimness and attractiveness in order to get the picture of how men and women appeared in ads, In general, bodies in ads are presented as slim (39.8%), firm (46.6%) and especially attractive (73.7%) rather than muscled (10.7%). Differences in body appearances can be noticed in the way women’s and men’s magazines portrayed muscularity (4?=67.349; df=1; p<0.01), firmness (y?=11.470; sd=1; p<0.01), slimness (2=39.430; df=1; p<0.01), attractiveness (y?=12.102; df=1; p<0.01). This means that ads in Playboy and Men's Health represented more muscled body images, while Cosmopolitan had a tendency towards presenting firm, slim and attractive body images. Regarding sex, there are also differences in presenting these characteristics of body appearances indicating that men in ads appeared more muscled (2=116.330; df1; p<0.01) than women. On the other hand, ads more often portrayed women as firm (2=14.151; dE1; p<0.01), slim (72=88.397; df1; p<0.01) and attractive (y2+87.064; df1; p<0.01). 3.3. Types of product (or object) ‘Ads target women by providing information about products to “help” them look attractive and feel better about themselves (Serdar, 2005). Therefore, we focused on some additional visual elements in ads such as products/services/objects and on visual representations of them regarding type of magazine and sex. Apparently, ads usually do not visualise present services, but only products and/or objects (for example, polyclinies were classified as objects not as services if ads contained visual representation of the building itself). Statistical analysis did not show any differences in visual representation of products or objects regarding sex (y?=2.276; df=2; p>0.01). On the other hand, there are differences regarding the type of magazines and visual presentation of product or object p<0.01). In women’s magazine Cosmopolitan products were more often visually presented, while visual presentation of objects was more frequent in inen’s magazines Playboy and Men’s Health 765emational Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on S What we also consider interesting is the relationship between the body and the produ in ads, Thus, we created four categories to show in which ways bodies are related to tha produets: (1) body-consumer ~ this category included bodies on which products such clothes, accessories, etc. are placed on; (2) body-witness — this category referred to this bodies as a result of using products, those for achieving younger appearance (fy example, decorative and preparative cosmetics, muscles, ete.; (3) body-target — a category considered bodies that appeared as potential users of the products and @ body-suggestion — category that included bodies suggesting the use of specific prod (for example, famous people or experts promoting certain products). In general, b consumer relationship (38.9%) had the highest distribution of all. Ads also illus body-suggestion (25.2%), body-witness (22.9%) and body-target (13%) relation but with lower frequencies. ‘There are also differences in the way men’s and women’s magazines (17=28.142; <0.01) show body-product relationship in ads and in the way men and won portrayed in relation to the advertised products (244.643; df=3; p<0.01). Cons the type of magazines, the differences are between two types of body-prodt relationship: body-consumer and body-witness relationship. This means that Cosmopolitan had more body-witnesses, while Playboy and Men's Health showed: body-consumers relations. Regarding sex, the differences are among body-witnes body-suggestion relationship. Thus, women are more often portrayed as being “rpgult” of using specific products (for example, preparative and decorative cosm for gaining firm, shiny body/face), while in analysed ads it is men who “suggest use of specific product (for example, experts promoting certain products or services) 3.4. Types of gaze Our research interest was also on the type of gaze in ads. It can be seen as an impg indicator of how magazines do not only portray men and women differently specific ways, but also as an indicator of specific time, social and cultural cont which masculinity and feminity is represented. The advertisers have always utilised gaze in order to direct the viewer's attention. Namely, it can be pointed directly towaag the viewer in order fo establish a direct and explicit connection with him/her, or, ig be focussed on other person/s in the ad, on the product or on some other part with ad. It is definitely an important part of advertising strategy because the viewer’ inevitably follow the gaze of the person in the ad. When Goffman (1979) theorised about the ‘hyper-ritualizations’ of social scenes ig where the common denominator was female subordination he argued thal subordination ultimately connoted the infantalization of women which can be cla according to ‘licensed withdrawal’. Since women were usually represented as pro by a male, literally or metaphorically, it was possible for them to withdraw fr scene. The withdrawal was often accompanied by a certain type of gaze whicl usually undirected, looking down or simply hidden. 4 We were interested in the dimensions of existence, quality and absence of eye between the viewer and a male/female in ads, defining six categories: (1) directSection Sociology and [Healthcare the viewer (eye contact with the reader), (2) averted gaze’, (3) gaze at her/himself, (4) goze at a product, (5) gaze at other person/s and (6) absence of gaze (bodies are without faces or looking in another direction). As far as the types of gaze are concemed, it is jmportant to stress that men/women in the analysed ads very often gaze at the viewer, either directly, making eye contact with the viewer (48.1%) or indirectly, displaying averted gaze (15.7%). In contrast, the frequencies of occurrences of visual contact with products are very low (3.3%) and the gaze at their own bodies (‘gaze at her/himself’) is almost inexistent (1.1%) and in almost all cases performed by men. This can be explained by the currently increasing tendency to portray a man characterised by the attention paid to his personal appearance. The other two categories simply focus viewers’ attention according to the ad strategies. There are differences regarding the first type of gaze or gaze at a viewer within different type of magazines (y?=24.924; df=1; p<0.01), meaning that in women’s magazine bodies more often directly gaze at a viewer than the bodies in men’s magazines. Furthermore, contrary to the Goffiman’s thesis of female undirected gaze, our analysis showed differences in sex (y?=17.794; df=1; p<0.01). Thus, women in ads more often directly gaze at a viewer than men. It goes along with the claim that men tend to avoid the posing of the passive object by averting the gaze, thus underlying their supposed indifference towards the viewer and suggesting their other possible actions and interests. 4, CONCLUSION Modern advertising rely on visual images that can have powerful impact on men’s and women’s perceptions, values, attitudes and behaviours. Advertisements are usually staged constructions designed to sell something. However, due to the photography’s realism, combined with aesthetic and technological expertise, images in advertisements produce persuasive simulations of the real world (Schroeder, Zwick, 2004, 30). Besides, advertisements should not be analysed isolated from historical context, ethical concerns and consumers’ responses (Schroeder, 2006, 304), implying that they should be socially and culturally contextualised. Female images in magazines published for Croatian market are mostly used to advertise cosmetics, hygiene or medicaments for external use. They can also be seen in more than a half of fashion advertisements, even though the number of male images in this type of advertisements is increasing. Women are portrayed as slim, attractive and usually dressed, but in comparison with men more often half naked. Furthermore, the analysis indicates that women are “put” in specific relation with the product suggesting that they gain their beauty and attractiveness by using particular products. The typical image of beautiful, attractive women addressing the viewer continues to be employed in advertisements, but it is possible to trace differences as far as the type of gaze is concerned. It suggests that women are no more represented as ‘tuning out’ from images, but they have become increasingly more active and more decisive. ? Averted gaze represents a depicted person’s noticeable avoidance of the gaze of another, or of the camera lens or artist (and thus of the viewer). This may involve looking up, looking down or looking away. (Dyer, 1982) 767SGEM 2015 International Multidisciplinary Seientific Conference on Social Sciences and Arts Even though we analysed some of indicators of stereotypical presentation of women:4 the analysis of used categories indicates that advertisements in magazines still Portray 4 women in stereotypical way, although some social changes can be noticed, Therefore: the analysis of different type of magazines implies some kind of mixture regarding male/female stereotypes and new approaches representing the concept of feminity, idea of feminity has always been the counterpart of the idea of masculinity. In othe words, if the representation of women’s images has gained more strength altered through such changes. 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