I love seeing ways that companies advertise and
promote themselves, and remember vividly being drawn to a Juicy Couture advertisement I saw in a magazine a few months back. Maybe it's the PR major in me, but it's always been fun for me to analyze the ways companies choose to market their product or message. Juicy's ads usually scream pink and girly, but with an obvious touch of edge. I want to analyze Juicy's 2009 “Do the Dont’s” campaign, which is no exception to their usual advertisements' "look and feel." The models in this campaign are “breaking society rules” but still remain to look chic and polished. I found this campaign really interesting and am excited to analyze how sexuality and gender are represented within these ads for Essay 2. The message about Juicy products I took out of the advertisements is that it’s perfectly okay to “break the rules and go overboard", but you are still supposed to maintain certain stereotypical roles and fulfill expectations. There are more images from this campaign-I thought it would especially interesting to discuss how frivolous the men in the advertisements look and how Juicy twisted some gender roles and stereotypes. For example-how often do we see men in tutus? I'm curious to begin analyzing these ads and the entire campaign and discuss how the images can "shock" the viewer and also how they tie into the messaging words on the ad. The messages are not about the Juicy products at all, but rather "empowering" women with quick one-liner advice such as "Go overboard", "You can always get what you want" and "Make a mess". A potential (very simple, basic) thesis idea: Through Juicy Couture's Do the Don't advertising campaign, the women's sexuality seems to challenging our culture's typical gender roles, but still continues to expose women as sexual objects. I hope to let readers fully understand the double bind women are often faced with-and do so through comparing Juicy's messaging with the gender roles portrayed within their ad campaign.
Let me know what you guys think or any ideas you have :)
Andi-
ReplyDeleteI think this ad campaign is a great idea for our next paper and you have a lot of different aspects you can discuss. I think that your thesis is well written makes your argument clear.
Maybe one angle you could focus on is how on the surface it looks like an empowering campaign to break the stereotypical role of women in our society but in looking closer it does the opposite. One of the ads says "go over-board" but the woman in the ad is doing the complete opposite and its the guy whose going over-board by wearing a skirt and holding a purse. In your paper you could analyze how the quotes say one thing but then the appearance of the girl says another. Shes dressed very conservative and feminine which is the opposite of over-board. You could incorporate ideas from Mulvey in how the women in the ad is portrayed as simply a passive sexual object while the guy is creating the action.
I think this is a really good topic though and you have a lot you can work with, plus i really like the ads, they are really intriguing and different from what we normally see.
Andi -
ReplyDeleteI agree with Nina. This is a great idea for your paper. I also agree with her that one aspect of these ads you could focus on is that, although they are geared towards women, it is the men who are actually doing what the copy says. The woman is always dressed conservatively in contrast to the man. Mulvey will be a great choice for this; it's too bad we haven't read Judith Butler yet, because she looks at gender performance with regards to drag. You might also look at Bordo's "Beauty (Re)Discovers the Male Body;" the male featured in these ads reminds me of the the passive male in her argument.
As for your thesis, I agree with what you say about the women being portrayed as a sexual object, but I do think that looking at the men would be a more interesting angle into these ads. What do you think? ~Megan
I think that this is a really good idea. I actually though about doing this also. I think that your thesis is written well and sets up a good idea for this paper. I think that in these photos, the women like plastic and fake while the men look like real people. So, even looking past what they are wearing, these advertisements still make women out to be objects. I wonder if by these advertisements the media is trying to tell us that we should dress according to our gender or if we shouldn't. Is it making fun of people who choose to dress against the stereotype? I think there are many different approaches you could take to this, which will make for an interesting paper. I am excited to see how this turns out.
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