Course: WST103.05 Student: Jaime V.

Gonzales Instructor: Maria Prado Date: 4/25/2008 Analysis of Two Pieces of Advertising I chose the two pieces of advertising from the May 2008 edition of Cosmopolitan magazine. Both of them deal with ways of modifying a womans body, however slightly. In that way, they offer a view of normative femininity. Their content seems harmless enough, and it is true that while condemning their normativity out of hand just imposes another prescriptive model simply going in the opposite direction (instead of saying you should/must do this any extreme bashing of this type of advertising simply says you should/must not do this), it is also true that receiving their message without questioning can be dangerous. It can be dangerous because even though conforming to the norms means one less worry in a persons life, it also means restricting the possibilities of identity and self-expression, or perhaps doing something a person might feel is wrong and strange but because the reigning norms say it is wrong and strange not to follow established guidelines, the person herself may feel she is the one who is wrong and strange. Therefore, these two pieces of advertising are not harmful in themselves, but should be seen with a critical eye by every woman who comes across them (I realize I am using the modal verb should, but I believe in this instance its use is warranted). The first piece of advertising appears on page 201. It is for a moisturizer/tanning cream. Its main caption says The difference between noticing your glow and being drawn to it and pictures a photograph of a man approaching a smiling woman. This advertising caters to the perception that woman are (always) interested in attracting men. Of course, there is nothing wrong with wanting to attract attention to oneself or with trying to find a partner for whatever activity one has a mind to, but what this piece of advertising is trying to impose is a desirable body image of a tanned woman who has temptingly touchable skin by modifying the body. Now, I dont believe an extreme critique like Wittigs idea of an ideal femininity deforming the female body is really appropriate in this instance, but the process of modification for the sake of conformity is definitely there. It is also there in the next piece of advertisement, which appears on page 273, where a pink shaving razor peels off a layer of thorny bramble to reveal dewy, pink flowers. The final caption of the advert reads FREE YOUR SKIN. We see here how something as naturaland I use this term advisedly, disavowing any moral judgment as to the superiority of inferiority of anything to which we stick the label of naturalas body hair needs to be vanished because it is something noxious,

something that hurts (thorns are prickly), something dark and forbidding, a prison (hence the free harangue). Of course it is true that I and many other think excessive hair in women is nasty, but to what extent the quasi-religious practice of getting rid of this hair and the censure that comes from not following it is a prison in itself? Ultimately, how valid it is to question this practice? Perhaps the only justification comes from giving each individual woman more choices as to how to manage their bodies, which seems to me, at least for now, to be a desirable step toward a healthy individual freedom.