Fashion Advertising: Exploitation of the Female Body
On the perspective of women in the fashion world, designer Donna Karan once said, “Today, fashion is really about sensuality—how a woman feels on the inside. In the '80s women used suits with exaggerated shoulders and waists to make a strong impression. Women are now more comfortable with themselves and their bodies—they no longer feel the need to hide behind their clothes.” What Karan states is a true point concerning the fashion world today. Is it about women being more comfortable with their bodies, or are they rather simply being exploited?
For my final paper, I focused on three different fashion brands that implement various types of sexualizing + objectifying tactics in their advertising with women. For each brand I selected one advertisement to represent these tactics. From this advertisement I analyzed Brand History, Representation (Of the Model), Gender (Of the Model), Race (Of the Model), Gaze, Visual Elements, and Intended Product output.
The three brands I selected were Dolce & Gabbana, Calvin Klein and Sisley.
A common misconception about fashion advertising is that they are only selling products. But rather, they are selling and portraying a lifestyle that they want their brand to be associated with. If you buy into their brand, you are participating in lifestyle that fits into a certain gender, race, class and so forth. Being a huge fan and follower of the fashion industry, I am very aware of the different representations for each brand. Given this inherent understanding, I found it easy to dissect each advertisement and relate it to this brand representation. I took these constructed lifestyles and used that to shape my critiques of the ads.
The results were that there is a common, underlying misuse of female bodies in fashion advertising. I found varying degrees of objectification and sexualization of females in these ads. Some, like the Dolce & Gabbana advertisement, were blatantly putting the female on a platter for pure objectification purposes. On the other hand, there are others, like the Calvin Klein advertisement, which displayed objectification and sexualization in a more subtle manner. It doesn't have to show a woman in a direct sexual situation in order for it to be considered misuse of the female body. There are many other actors that play into this determination, like the positioning, visual techniques of the ad, camera angle (gaze) and so forth.
Citations:
"Calvin Klein: Corporate." Calvin Klein. Phillips-Van Heusen. 2007
"Dolce & Gabbana: Coporate." Dolce & Gabbana. Dolce & Gabbana. 2007
Kaplan, E. Ann. “Introduction.” Feminism and Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Lindner, Katharina. "Images of Women in General Interest and Fashion Magazine Advertisements from 1955 to 2002." Sex Roles 51 (2004): 409-421.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Feminism and Film (2000): 37-38
"Overview: Who We Are." United Colors of Benneton. 24 Oct 2007. Benneton Group. 12 Dec 2007