Media Texts, Brands, and Identity: For Him Magazine (FHM Magazine)

Since the emergence of advertising in American culture one thing that has remained constant is the visible truth that men and women are portrayed differently. In consideration to the evolution of man kind gender roles have evolved immensely throughout time, although advertisements have not kept up with this process of evolution. Companies to this day use their tactics and skills to reach out to specific genders such as pretty fonts with a stylish message, while advertisements towards men portray the character as strong and intimidating. The typical viewer can easily spot the difference in the portrayal of genders. Men are portrayed this way because the viewers look up to these characters, they want to be

Using clever and borderline juvenile material Bud Light has seen much success in their targeted consumers in American males of the ages 18-49. With great success we believe Bud Light has the potential to increase its reach and share by advancing marketing opportunities to females and exploiting their other product lines. In doing so Bud Light must take a different approach from its perceived masculinity to an all-around and more suitable approach to our female audience.

In Breazeale’s text, “In Spite of Women”, he touches on how the magazine, Esquire, focuses on incorporating content that is solely directed to the attention of the heterosexual man. In the magazine, Breazeale states that it is an attempt to make men fantasize women only sexually which leaves men with the power and control that they believed that had lost post-depression era. Throughout Kenon Breazeale’s text, he shows how that for there to even be a male consumer, there must be women involved. So, while the magazine touched on things like food, apparel, and home décor, Esquire needed to incorporate erotic images of women in order to capture the attention of heterosexual males. In Breazeale’s text, his purpose is to focus on Esquire to emphasize men’s dominating nature over women in society. In my rhetorical analysis, I will concentrate on analyzing how Breazeale argues that Esquire magazine utilized erotic text, cartoons, and illustrations about women to place the consumer role on males.

Steve Craig, in his article Men’s Men and Women’s Women especially define how different sexes in advertisement can influence a particular audience towards a product; one stereotypical method he describes is “Men’s Women” (Craig).One such ad using sex appeal, and a basic structure of “Men’s Women” to bring in customer was made by BMW in 2008 to sell their used cars. BMW, which is a world-renowned company known for its performance heavy automobiles, targets a male audience by comparing a gorgeous woman to their cars.This ad by BMW, who no doubt make amazing cars, degrade women through its message, and it enforces Steve Craig’s “Men’s women” tactic, but this ad also goes a step further and displays the ever-present patriarchy in advertisement overtly.

In today`s population gender, roles play part in our daily life. Gender roles are created by the society that each person lives in. It can be broken down into feminine roles, strength masculine, and many others. In American culture, it shows their gender roles by appealing to the environment and changing the way society thinks. After watching The Dangerous Ways Ads See Women video, it is important to look at the gender roles in contemporary U.S. society. I picked up four different magazines to collect my samples for this assignment. I collected four magazines at Barnes and Nobles on November 9, 2016. The first magazine that I chose was the Men`s Health magazine; which talked about how its best to fit and real guys who love to work out have insane results. The second magazine I collected was the Tatler magazine. The third magazine is Vanity Fair, and the fourth one is the rolling stone magazine. All of the magazines that I sampled from are all different because they all have different pictures that show why gender role can be different in culture. I will discuss how gender is portrayed in the sample ads, how the gender roles are reinforced in the situation that I observed, and I will apply the theory to the observations. Gender roles are very important to American Culture.

There are two well-known and prestigious brands of liquor that routinely create new and innovative advertisement that promote and persuade the audience to purchase and consume their product. Hennessy Cognac and Cîroc vodka are two completely different types of liquor; in spite of the fact, both companies use parallel advertising tactics in their lucrative marketing campaign. As the prevalence of alcohol use increases, so must the ingenuity when creating advertisement for alcoholic beverages. Both Hennessy and Cîroc sellers did a remarkable job promoting their product by utilizing similar advertising methods: sex appeal, celebrity appearances, accurate assumptions of their audiences, and selling an illustrious lifestyle to accompany the beverage. By Incorporating these methods the creators are able to tap into the audience’s self-conscience and influence viewers to purchase and consume the product being sold.

Advertisements can be found all over in our society. They are on television, in newspapers, on the Internet, and even on the sides of cars and buses. Advertisements greatly influence the way people shop and view products. Many companies use gender stereotypes as a strategy to advertise and sell their products. These advertisements show that men still have a more dominant role over women. Ads are openly sexist and objectifying towards both women and men and usually have a clear gender difference. After looking at many different ads for different products, one thing became clear. The advertisements used for adults and children help guide our society into the stereotypical gender roles we currently have and teach us that objectifying both men and women is acceptable.

In an advert for a female perfume by “Givenchy” a woman is shown who holds the materialistic characteristics. This is not how it really is in society. Not every woman has prominent curves, is slim and tall. This shows how advertisements do not fairly reflect society.

Advertising and Societies: Global Issues. New York, NY: Peter Land, Inc., 2003. Rpt. In Advertising. Ed. Laura K. Egendorf. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2006. Opposing Viewpoints. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web 30 July 2015

The main thing that is being addressed is the issue of gender stereotyping in advertisements period, not just is the advertisements in magazines but the advertisements that are presented in between television

By quoting several similar examples about home décor and drink, Breazeale pointed out that all those articles weren’t written in any occasional incidents. By contrast, Esquire was knitting similar misogynistic threads for years to conceptualize people about the gender related meanings of good and bad taste. Food such as steaks and fowl, home décor with clean and functional features and alcohol were considered as good and related with masculinity. On the other hand, ornamentation, carrot teensie-weenesies and anti-alcohol were perceived as bad and femininity. As a summary of the function of text, Breazeale concluded that all Esquire did were trying to recuperate a female-identified role for men which need arguing against traditional gender related social roles. Yet at the same time, Esquire conveyed the message that any attempts of changing the traditional modes of patriarchal rules was not allowed. So it was necessary to emphasize the privilege that male had over female. This job was accomplished by the other function of the magazine – illustrations.

This product is imported from France and is being sold for recreational purposes such as; socializing drinking, enjoyable times, and elegance class. It is said that nothing draws us together more than alcohol. Sitting down and having a drink with fellow peers usually leads to cheerfulness, laughter, and an all-around good time. The people in the visual allow one to remember the stress reliever that alcohol helps sustain. When individuals look at this depiction they receive a constant image of a worthy time running through their mind, so that when they go to the store and see the ultra-premium vodka they remember the advertisement and think about purchasing the merchandise. That then allows the buyer to put themselves in a similar setting, in which they relive the advertisement in their head. The people in the visual are socializing among each other which brings upon another reason to the selling of the product. It is show that this product is appropriate to have during social events as the group is seen with their drinks held high with positive facial expressions shown. The idea of this advertisement is to show that every brand represents something different, especially in the liquor industry. Since Sean “Diddy” combs is an equal share venture, he applies the alcoholic beverage to his lifestyle, which is rich and

Target audience: The commercial is targeted both male and female beer drinkers with decent income (because they can afford to travel to nice beach). They have the need to chuck away worries to live the moment. The commercial is also targeted the critical, peak beer-drinking summer season.

The man is fully clothed in a suit, which represents power and formality. It is extremely suggestive as it looks like he came to this position without the woman’s knowledge or consent since her sunglasses are pushed up for her to see. He is in a dominating position where she has to look up at him and the man’s face isn’t shown in the ad, which shows that he is confident. The ad is suggesting that if you have Sky Vodka, you can look glamourous and wealthy as well. The men are always given more power and a higher status than the women (Appendix A). The second image reveals how femininity is portrayed. In the ad for Dolce and Gabbana’s Monico Lipstick, notice the lightness of the woman’s hand touching her face, the touching of one’s face, especially the finger-to-mouth pose is reminiscent of a child. She is also dressed seductively with a come-hither look on her face that is bold and suggestive (Appendix A).

On television commercials, billboards, the radio, public transportation advertisements, planes, the internet, and almost everywhere people go there is always directed broadcasting of advertisements for companies to sell their product; a product that is never promoted for all of the general public to use, but instead to emphasize on specific categories of consumption . Whether it may be categorized in the decadent, the money saving, health, cleaning, cooking, automotive, or whatever sub category it may be; and bigger roles that play in to commercialism are gender roles . Men and women have very different lifestyles, what they buy, do, consume, and produce. As stated in Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes, “Popular conceptions of femininity