Changing Perspective Of Male Body Essay

Looking back on history men’s and women’s roles haven’t always been divided; both genders were needed to work and provide and until the fourteen hundreds, they wore the same clothing. Men’s fashion developed to show the reality of their bodies with apparel such as tights, while women’s bodies were accentuated in tight bodices. Bordo shows us that as men’s clothing became more comfortable and utilitarian their role in society followed suit. Men today are supposed to be active; they are workers, the penetrators, the ones in control. Advertisements in the essay show us men continually portrayed as “rocks,” aggressively facing the camera or actively working. When women appear, they are simply to be gazed at and admired for their beauty. The images of men acting coincide with society’s standard of men being the

An important controversial issue that America faces today is the debate of sex in advertising. Edward A. McCabe and John Carroll are two authors that present opposing arguments about this issue. McCabe persuades the reader into thinking that sex in advertising is no big deal, while Carroll explains why this is a major problem in America. Sex ads are defined as any type of advertising that shows pictures of partial nudity with wording that relates to the body in a sexual way, usually portraying women. Sex in advertising has been around for a long time but has the industry become too sexually explicit?

In Susan Bordo’s “Beauty (Re)discover The Male Body, she uses advertisement as a form of her argument on how

In “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body”, Susan Bordo, a known feminist that studies body issues like eating disorders in men and women, focuses on the shift of views amongst men and women in advertisements that we see portrayed by the media. In our society, sex sells. Because of this, women have always been the targets of scrutiny, but why now fix our attentions to men? Bordo explains how homosexual men have shaped the way our society views men in the media, not by their “Schwarzenegger bulk”, as Bordo describes, but by how a man’s “body projects strength, solidity” being that “he’s no male waif” (Bordo 170). One of the main contributors to this shift in attention, other than the homosexual male community, is fashion icon Calvin Klein, a

This is a chapter from her book The Male Body.  This chapter explains her thoughts on the use of the male body in advertising.  Bordo explains how and why she first got interested in looking for new advertisements of males in magazines.  Bordo explicitly depicts her thoughts on how people look at the male body, how it was used in advertising, movies, and our culture overall.  She also goes into how over time the use of male bodies has changed in our culture.  Bordo uses a lot of pictures and actual advertisements to draw you in as a reader and get you thinking about the depictions of male physique in your own way. The author uses many major clothing companies as examples for her depictions like Calvin Klein, Haggar, Dockers, and Gucci.

In order to arrive at the conclusion from the present study as intended to find out the difference in depiction of women in men’s magazines from that of the women’s magazines, a method of content analysis has been adopted. This content analysis focused on the portrayals of women’s body in advertisement in six different magazines; three Men’s Magazine (Playboy, Maxim and FHM) and three Women’s Magazine (Glamour, In Style and Cosmopolitan). The purpose of this study was to determine the portrayal of women body in the advertisements of the male magazines differ from those of the females. It was also intended toward finding that the women were portrayed in different ways for different audiences. Portrayals of women in magazines (men’s and women’s) may cultivate beliefs or expectations about physical appearance, sexuality, relationships or gender roles. Previous research by Rechert and Carpenter (2004) on this topic suggested that there has been an overall increase in sexual dress in portrayals of women and intimate contact between men and women from 1983 to 2003 in ads of different types of magazines including those for men and women. If the model in the ad was nude or almost nude, she would be considered sexually dressed. Intimate contact was contact between a male and female in an ad that was suggestive of sex or sexual acts. For the sake of the current content analysis, the focus will be on the findings of the increases in sexual dress. According to the researchers, sex in

In the Tom Ford ad, a woman is seen laying down on her side, half naked and slim, looking at her face full of makeup through a mirror. Marketers use the concept of gender, mainly women to display sexuality, providing a resource that can be used to receive attention. The audiences’ attention is caught right away in this ad as they see a “sexy” woman being the main focus. Advertising shapes a society’s culture, and reflects its values. Furthermore, advertising is a part of “a discourse through and about objects” as it does not mention anything about the product but how it is connected to major domains in our lives (Jhally 328). The makeup product of Tom Ford is not mentioned in the ad whatsoever, but the mirror is used as an indication of beauty viewed through society’s expectations. It promotes images of what the audience assumes to be “the good life” as it tries guiding us to become “happy” through the purchase of products. If a woman were to buy any makeup by Tom Ford, she will automatically be happy as the makeup will give her glow in life because she will be able to do anything with her new and enhanced beauty. The concept of advertising consists of wrapping up your emotions and selling them back to you (329) by giving fake happiness and satisfaction that loops an individual to chase goods in order to fill the void of

Advertisements play a big part in our society and are significant for products to be seen to attract people’s attention and be persuaded to buy. They might not always be interested in purchasing anything but instead just taking a peak, especially when women are involved. As time goes by, more women are depicted as sexual icons in adverts. This is true in sports adverts with men portrayed as masculine and athletic, while women are characterised as sexy and lacking athletic potential even though they are well-known athletes. Many people such as Goffman (1979) suggested that advertising images transfers cultural ideals of both genders explicitly or subtly, by

The ideas that define masculine qualities have been the fuel for a lot of debate and controversy. Masculine stereotypes are either reinforced or discouraged in advertising. Although a lot of formal interpretations of female stereotypes in advertising have been made there were little formal responses to the male body in advertising until Susan Bordo published her book, The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private. In the chapter “Beauty (Re)Discovers the Male Body” Bordo examines the state of men in advertising. The typical image of a hyper-masculine straight man is dangerously present in most advertising directed towards males. In this chapter, Bordo states, “Men, according to Berger’s formula, must never be seen as though they are asking this question, and may display their beauty only if it is an unavoidable side effect of other ‘business”(155). Believes such as these have caused many issues for men the and they way they see themselves. In advertising, the negative influence of gender roles and hypermasculinity should be adjusted with gender-inclusive points of view that encourage free expression.

in men’s magazines. While conventional advertising practice increasingly depends upon the aphorism that “sex sells,” conventional mass communications research approaches to advertising containing sexual imagery have assumed that such images do affect audiences and such images portray inaccurate truths to audiences. This thesis, however, makes no claims about audience interpretations or media effects. Instead this thesis looks closely at the visual rhetoric of sexualized images of women used in fashion advertising in men’s magazines to ask how sexualized imagery of women functions rhetorically as part of a branding message presumably designed to sell a product.

In the twenty-first century, both men and women have become targeted groups in advertising. Both target markets are flooded with images and content that promotes stereotypical sexual identities that are based on sexual images as well as cultural notions of gender roles. When flipping through a magazine a woman or girl would see ads for cosmetic surgery, makeup, wedding dresses, perfume, diets, jewelry and the list goes on. Women are affected on many levels by the flawless, airbrushed and idealized models when viewing such advertisements. Although women have been the subject of such advertising methods for centuries, men are also now bombarded with similar messages regarding perceived norms of idealized gender roles. Men are sent the message that they are to be physically fit, successful, and to judge women on their physical characteristics as well as their fashion ability.

Authors, Michael Jacobson and Anne Mazur argue, in their article, “The Iron Maiden: How Advertising Portrays Women,” that advertisements underlines sexist concepts about the ideal female and men, ads exploit sexuality. Michael Jacobson and Anne Mazur’s purpose is to describe sexism and sexuality in marketing of women and men in advertisements. Michael Jacobson and Anne Mazur aims to convince their readers that sexism and sexuality in advertisement put impractical ideas of appearance and encourages concern and self-doubt. “Everywhere we turn, advertisements tell us what it means being a desirable man or woman (1)." Michael Jacobson and Anne Mazur’s skillfully use anecdotes, metaphor, and comparison techniques to create a strong, convincing article.

Advertisements are made to grasp a consumer’s attention to the item the creators are selling, and sometimes the decide to objectify an entire audience in hopes of receiving attention from the male population. Studies have shown that as time passes, women become less affected and offended by the oversexualization of women in advertisements. Therefore, women have become desensitized to their objectification, to the point they now view it as normal. During the initial period of the hypersexualization of women, advertisements about women in traditional roles such as housewife or being in the kitchen, receded. In 1991 a new wave of feminism appeared, where women are trying to reclaim their bodies by embracing sexuality, while it is a good concept,

Why are men so sensitive when it comes to their masculinity? This question came to me when I began reading the introduction of this section on sex. I believe that men are pushed into a social stereotype just like women are. They are told how to act, when to cry, and when to be tough from a very young age. These traits are not only bestowed upon them by their parents, but by movies, music and government of the past and present.

Everyday we expose ourselves to thousands of advertisements in a wide variety of environments where ever we go; yet, we fail to realize the influence of the implications being sold to us on these advertisements, particularly about women. Advertisements don’t just sell products; they sell this notion that women are less of humans and more of objects, particularly in the sexual sense. It is important to understand that the advertising worlds’ constant sexual objectification of women has led to a change in sexual pathology in our society, by creating a culture that strives to be the unobtainable image of beauty we see on the cover of magazines. Even more specifically it is important to study the multiple influences that advertisements have