Advertising: The representation of women in advertising

The representation of women in advertising is a vital area of study. We need to be able to discuss how representations have changed and apply these ideas to both unseen advertisements and our CSPs.

The notes from the lesson are below.

Jean Kilbourne: Killing us softly

Activist and cultural theorist Jean Kilbourne has been studying the image of women in advertising for over 40 years. Her series ‘Killing us softly’ highlighted the negative representation of women in advertising.

She went on to make further documentaries studying this issue and whether it was changing over time.



Liesbet van Zoonen: Feminist Media Studies

Liesbet van Zoonen was one of the first theorists to explicitly link gender, feminism and media studies. Writing since the 1990s, van Zoonen is a key figure in third wave feminism alongside theorists such as Butler and McRobbie.

Looking specifically at the representation of women in advertisements in the 1970s and 80s, van Zoonen questioned how much things had really changed. For example, women in adverts may be shown to have jobs but their appearance was usually still the vital element.

Liesbet van Zoonen: third wave feminist

Like McRobbie, van Zoonen was interested in the pleasures female audiences took from the women’s magazines that were heavily criticised by more radical 1970s-style feminists.

In a similarity with Butler, van Zoonen sees gender as negotiated and dependent on social and historical context. She wrote the meaning of gender is a “discursive struggle and negotiation, the outcome having far-reaching socio-cultural implications.” (van Zoonen, 1994) 

Liesbet van Zoonen: constructing meanings

van Zoonen also built on Stuart Hall’s reception theory with regards to how gender representations communicate their meanings to audiences. She suggested the media’s influence in constructing gender is dependent on:

• Whether the institution is commercial or public
• The platform (print/broadcast/digital)
• Genre (e.g. drama/news/advertisement)
• Target audience
• How significant the media text is to that audience

Blog tasks: Representation of women in advertising

The following tasks are challenging - some of the reading is university-level but this will be great preparation for the next stage in your education after leaving Greenford. Create a new blogpost called 'Representation of women in advertising' and work through the following tasks.

Academic reading: A Critical Analysis of Progressive Depictions of Gender in Advertising

Read these extracts from an academic essay on gender in advertising by Reena Mistry. This was originally published in full in David Gauntlett's book 'Media, Gender and Identity'. Then, answer the following questions:

1) How does Mistry suggest advertising has changed since the mid-1990s?

2) What kinds of female stereotypes were found in advertising in the 1940s and 1950s?

3) How did the increasing influence of clothes and make-up change representations of women in advertising?

4) Which theorist came up with the idea of the 'male gaze' and what does it refer to?

5) How did the representation of women change in the 1970s?

6) Why does van Zoonen suggest the 'new' representations of women in the 1970s and 1980s were only marginally different from the sexist representations of earlier years?

7) What does Barthel suggest regarding advertising and male power?

8) What does Richard Dyer suggest about the 'femme fatale' representation of women in adverts such as Christian Dior make-up?


Media Magazine: Beach Bodies v Real Women (MM54)

Now go to our Media Magazine archive and read the feature on Protein World's controversial 'Beach Bodies' marketing campaign in 2015. Read the feature and answer the questions below in the same blogpost as the questions above.

1) What was the Protein World 'Beach Bodies' campaign?

2) Why was it controversial?

3) What did the adverts suggest to audiences?

4) How did some audiences react?

5) What was the Dove Real Beauty campaign?

6) How has social media changed the way audiences can interact with advertising campaigns? 

7) How can we apply van Zoonen's feminist theory and Stuart Hall's reception theory to these case studies?

8) Through studying the social and historical context of women in advertising, do you think representations of women in advertising have changed in the last 60 years?


There is a lot of work here - you will be given lesson time to do it but will need to finish for homework. Due date set by your exam class teacher.