The advertising industry is a strange world. It’s full of fake promises, fake lives and fake boobs. The overt falsities are somewhat ridiculous – the idea that a mascara can “millionize” your eyelashes (L’Oreal), or that a certain body spray will literally attract swathes of women (Lynx). While these lies are absurd and annoying, they don’t necessarily seek to undermine women to the same extent as those which enlist the more subtle enforcing of stereotypes and popular mythology. The same restrictive stereotypes are repeatedly reiterated throughout the media, protected by the guise of fact or accepted norms. Two recent adverts for popular products exemplify this phenomenon perfectly – Kellogg's Special K, and Gillette's Venus Embrace razor.
Kellogg’s capitalise on inaccurate societal myths about femininity and autonomy via their advertising campaign for Special K. The adverts centre around their free “personal plan” to help us “get slimmer”. Using a diet (restriction of food) to sell a food product is sadly a pretty telling analogy of the way advertising works. The TV advert in question shows a woman on a dull day looking longingly at a red dress in a window display. She is feeling depressed, ostensibly because she can’t fit into this dress. Quite why she didn’t realise she could buy it in a different (healthy, sexy) size, I don’t know. Perhaps it was the last one in the shop. For whatever reason, this woman is sad because she perceives her body as not good enough to wear this dress. She doesn’t look overweight at all. Reading the small print, the advert notes that people with a healthy BMI should not undertake the diet. If this woman is unhealthily overweight then Kate Moss is a perfect example of a healthy weight. I emailed the Advertising Standards Agency about it, and apparently the model’s BMI is 0.9 over a healthy weight. Well that’s fine then. Then again, the advert never even pretended to be about health, it was always about looking “good” in that dress.
Which raises another problem – the dull day, the loneliness, the sadness, are all associated with not being thin enough. Once the lady is thin enough, it’s sunny and she has loads of friends around her. Perceived “fat” equals lonely, grey life. Perceived “thin” equals happy, sunny life. What is more – this woman is presumably a capable person, with enough earning potential to buy a luxury item such as this particular dress. Yet the advert insinuates that her entire life and mood is experienced as a response to her perceived bodily “flaws”.
The average dress size of a woman in the UK is either 16 or 14, depending on which source you look at. The model in the video (Signe Nordstrom) is a size 14. Perhaps I’m being cynical, but I can’t help thinking that the advert specifically chose a woman of this size to ensure that the number of women who “need” to utilise the diet is as large as possible. If this gorgeous, average/below average sized actress is unhappy about her weight, what message does it send to the millions of normal women watching?
Tellingly, the woman in the advert is the same size after her diet as she was before it. To me, that really wasn’t a successful attempt at losing weight. Kellogg’s don’t expect their viewers to notice this. They have made an advert for a food product which encourages people to eat less, with the end result of looking exactly the same. And yet in spite of this failure to address anything of relevance to their product, it is safe to assume that Kellogg’s’ advertising campaign is indeed increasing sales of Special K (judging by the length of time that they have been banging on about it, that is).
The Gillette advert, if you haven’t seen it, aims to sell us a razor which will give a close shave. Fair enough. It does this by showing a number of women in “idyllic” situations with their male partners. These wonderful experiences are made possible because their legs are so beautifully shaved, “it shaves you closer, so you can get closer”. I’m not debating the fact that you can literally get about half a millimetre closer to someone else if there is no hair in the way, but then again neither is Gillette. They are claiming that if you have perfectly shaved legs, you can be more intimate, and men will want you sexually. They are playing on the idea that if one’s legs are not shaved, they can’t be a part of intimacy. Perhaps you could still have sex, but you’d have to make sure you kept your legs away from your partner (I imagine that would be logistically difficult, but nevertheless). Women naturally grow hair, they always have, as far as I know, and the human race is doing pretty well. Who are Gillette to say that having shaved legs is a pre-requisite for intimacy? One of the situations in the advert didn’t even involve the man touching the woman’s legs, are they suggesting that a man who loves a woman would be so appalled by a bit of hair that he wouldn’t want to hug her, or sit next to her? Personally, I don’t think many men would even notice. Throughout this advert is the idea that women who use this product are “goddesses” – it is insulting that the advert has the audacity to pretend it is empowering women, by selling the idea that they must deviate from their biological norms in order to be capable of participating in fulfilling human relationships.
This ties in with a piece of advice I once read in a “women’s” magazine. Regarding the pre-sex disaster of not having shaved your legs, their advice was to take a shower with “your man”, and get in five minutes before him to give you time to sneakily shave. The likelihood is I would have already had a shower that day, why should I bother having another one? What if the guy doesn’t want a shower? What if it’s a chilly day?
Believe it or not I do know a few men who wouldn’t be bothered about this, especially if they were in love with the woman – I doubt there is a man who has fallen in love with a woman’s lack of leg hair. It is simplifying men to a breed who only want a woman if she conforms to society’s version of “female”, and simplifying women to people who would (and should) not think twice about taking fairly extensive and awkward measures to hide the fact that they are an adult female who grows hair. If a man did complain, perhaps the woman could always ask him why he hadn’t shaved his legs?
This particular advert is dripping with stereotypes and biased opinions – that women choose to shave their legs for no other reason than to please their man, that a man and a woman is the only relevant relationship set up, that happiness comes from heterosexual relationships (as long as you shave of course) – yet viewers are supposed to take such myths on board without questioning them.
Ironically, both Kellogg’s and Gillette owe their success, in part, to their competitors and colleagues throughout the advertising industry and media as a whole, for their incessant insistence that women must be thin and hairless in order to be happy and loved. Thankfully, this restrictive notion of life, beauty, and femininity is about as realistic as Katie Price’s cleavage.
- Lizzy
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