Woman analysis

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.