Advert 1 – Woman
The magazine name clearly indicates
the target audience that the magazine is intended to focus on, and it is
written informally to try and offer a bit of comfort and connection to the
audience. The main image of the advert is of a man smiling with a woman applying
her makeup, looking back in the mirror, possibly to look back at the man to see
if he appreciates, and this could be linked with Van Zoonens theory that women
are just objects for men to look at. The people in the main image are dominated
by white males, all of which are seeming to be middle class. This would link in
with Bell Hooks theory, that often products are designed purely for the white
and privileged classes of society. The language of the advert seems to
demonstrate that it is a male voice that, with words such as “dashing out on an
important date?” and “and you’re perfectly lovely again” seeming extremely
patronising, especially as its seen that the woman needs to be appearing
beautiful and “lovely” at all times in order to get her man. This also fits
with the context of 1960s America and Britain, where a woman was always
expected to be a housewife and be glamourous and obedient, and if she wasn’t
she’d be ostracised by society and seen as a spinster. The advert is quite
obviously demonstrating the editors ideology that women are submissive and of a
lower standing then men, and that the woman needs to look beautiful at all
times in order to succeed in getting the man that she needs. It also
demonstrates the key ideas of 1960s America and how its products were targeted
mainly for the white, middle class society that had the money to spend on
unnecessary things such as the latest makeup products, and it even demonstrates
its racist culture by hating no black men or women in the advert, which could
suggest that Max Factor (at the time) believed that black people didn’t
suit/were not worthy of their products, and did not try to target them in any
way.
Advert B
In the advert, the woman is seen to
be sat down with soap suds covering various places on her body, and she has her
hair tied back and is wearing makeup. The first thing to pick out in the advert
is it’s unrealistic to expect women to be perfect at all times. The advert
clearly shows that, even when taking a bath or shower, women are expected to
wear makeup and to have their hair in a perfect way in order to look beautiful
for the male eye, which is an approach that Van Zoonen believes to be true to
many aspects of society. Also, the advert uses a white woman to display its
character, and this would be to target the specific classes in America or
Britain that could afford to buy mundane items, such as the breeze soap.
Her positioning also could represent in Roland Barthes theory that she is being
made to look vulnerable and innocent, almost like a damsel in distress. This
would appeal to men that saw this advert, as they would want their partners to
look as glamorous but innocent as the model in the picture. The typography of
the advert also seems to suggest that it is being demanded by a man’s voice,
the phrase “darling…please…wash with Breeze” is a very subtle imperative that
displays the man’s dominance of over the woman and even suggesting that she is
unable to make a simple choice such as choosing a soap, let alone going to
university and getting educated or making important decisions for many people,
such as an PM would do.
Front Page
The front page of the magazine shows
a picture of a woman over a backdrop of warm, pastel colours as the time period
for the release of this issue is late august, and that is quit an autumnal
month and therefore requires a new season for clothes and fashion, which is
demonstrated on the dress of the woman as there are multiple flowers and petals
that can be seen, very bright and humbling colour display to match the
background of the magazine. The text on the subheadings are unique in that the
phrase “are you an A-level beauty?” plays with the context of women’s
liberation in the 1960s, where more and more women were becoming educated and
more women were being accepted into universities, so to almost suggest that
women don’t need an education and only need to look an “A-level beauty” is a
display of the patriarchal society if the 1960s showing its colours, as well as
the attitudes towards women just being housewives and looking glamourous just
for men at all times. The caption of lingerie goes lively would have been a
shocking thing to read on the cover of the magazine in the 1960s, but by
today’s standards the caption would be tame, as sexualisation of clothing and
particularly of women’s night wear in recent magazines is a lot more open about
women showing more of their kin to a more wider audience. Van Zoonen would be
seeing that as disgraceful but would maybe agree with the caption rather than
necessarily provide anything for the “male gaze”.
Contents
The contents page is reminiscing of a
newspaper style layout, with the multiple articles having subheadings and
living a very brief or short story about an article you can reads or a little
bit of information that could have been topical to the time. For example, the
message of Sid James playing Mark Anthony in Carry On Cleo would’ve been
topical at the time because the Carry On films were sweeping the nation and
were very quickly becoming a hit with the British public. The Image of the
Queen at the top of the page grabs the attention of the reader, and this may
have cleverly been done to promote how one of the most powerful figures in the
world is a woman, and that woman everywhere should be appraising themselves and
the power that women have rather than trying to please a man. The list of
contents to the left of the page give hints about what the magazine would
generally have in terms of content. Its interesting to see how a magazine
that’s supposed to be for women is containing a lot of material about pleasing,
attracting and trying to keep a man. To todays society that would seem quite a
shocking concept, particularly the Alfred Hitchcock article which in multiple
occasions Alfred claims not only that he partially owns his wife domestically,
but often picked his actresses solely on their appeal and sexual
attractiveness. Bell Hooks may have something to say about this, as all the
actors and actresses that were chosen were all very wealthy, upper class white
males and females, and Van Zoonen would say that the women in a lot of Alfred’s
films (particularly, you could argue, Psycho) are only being used as eye candy
for the male population that watch his films.
