Hitler

Hitler

Unit 3 Personal Investigation
For my unit 3 personal investigation I propose to explore how the representation of women in mainstream western media has changed and been influenced by the gender politics of the mid-twentieth century. I will be analysing the transferral from the domestic goddess portrayed in the early 1900s to the modern sexualised objects of today of which thousands of companies use to sell their products. Over the past century women have been moulded into being a stereotypical housewife that acts as a role model for all women of that period, right up until modern day media where women are still being shown in a clichéd manner of being overly seductive and provocative. In my opinion this suggests a negative outlook on the role of women and I hope to create a design for an advertisement that doesn’t objectify or sexualise the female figure.
To start my investigation I began to research current modern day advertisements from a number of top designer brands. Popular names such as Dolce & Gabbana, Tom Ford and American Apparel have centralised their advertisements on women to promote the product, and yet each designer incorporates a sexualised theme or situation in which the woman is partially naked or in a shot with a man. It is no doubt this style of product marketing works, the explicit images and sexual connotation certainly attracts both male and female consumers. However is it to say this type of product marketing is acceptable, regardless of how successful it is?
It seems this type of unreserved merchandising hasn’t always been present in the twentieth century. In the 1950s women were shown as an idealised housewife and mother; a stereotype inflicted everywhere in everyday life. From cigarette boxes to kitchen utensils, women were characterised to be useless, stupid and supposedly weak. The advertisements during this decade suggested a woman’s place was in the kitchen where she belonged and a man’s was out at work. I believe this invariable...

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