more visual journal: COLLAGING

I decided to start exploring the idea of making up some of my own examples of advertisements aimed a the male audience, using heavy gender stereotypes (obviously these aren't in the least bit serious)

These revisit the ideas from earlier in my visual journal about women being like objects, but instead I have used images of woman to help appeal these already masculine objects to men.

• I have used some pictures of women usually seen in old paintings; I thought this would give quite a comical effect, and also show the idea of modern day sexualisation, as in those days women were not really sexualised in the same way
• I added a little bit of detail using a coloured pencil, just to contrast with the collage

I also tried to add in some text for extra effect. I feel as though the word 'power' is predominantly used in masculine advertising, as it makes men feel good about themselves and emasculates them

• I like the idea of the women lying on the tape measure as it is also illustrating the point of women being conscious of their size and how they look, and whether or not they appeal to men
• a lot of these were all just random images I printed out, but I think I need to focus a bit more on the way they go together. I think if looks better when the images fit well together 

these two are images taken from american apparel adverts. I really like how these two work as images! I feel as though they are a bit more refined

• I think the idea of using the AA ads works well and definitely fits into my theme
• this also shows more modern day sexualisation of women  

WHERE TO GO NEXT?

• Like I said, I think I need to think more about how the images fit together with each other
• I want to explore using the american apparel ads with the tools 
• try and incorporate more typically masculine colours, to add to the massage I am trying to get across
• start thinking of some more slogans and tag lines 

does sex sell?

so in my previous blog post, I wanted to explore the idea of whether or not sex really does sell within advertising, even when it has nothing to do with the product in hand? Even as far back as the late 1800s naked women were used to sell tobacco. does sexualisation of the male and female bodies work? does it make people buy the products? or does it actually put people off?

well, the american psychological association (ASA) conducted a study made up of 53 experiments that included 8,489 participants which examined this question. At the end of the study, it actually showed that sex 'never helps brand memory'.

"when brands use violent or sexual content, our attention goes more towards the sexual and violent content at the expense of our focus being on the actual brand or product itself" Alessandra Litchenfeld

I suppose this means that advertising will gradually start becoming less sexualised; and in 2015 brands such as american apparel and Abercrombie and fitch released statements saying that they will be de-sexualising their adverts to attempt to increase sales!

the strange world of advertising

"advertisements guide thinking, action and behaviour as people come to accept mainstream ideas through visuals. The most crucial of these is what it means to be a man or a woman. Ideas about how to feel, dress, look and behave, and how to interact with other men and women is the bedrock of culture in which we live."

so to help me a little with my visual journal and my visual outcomes, I wanted to dive a bit deeper into the world of advertisements, and ones specially aimed towards a male audience.

I feel like the main theme within these three ads is mocking women to empower males and making them feel like the more dominant sex. I noticed there was a huge amount of adverts aimed at males belittling women, and it seems to be quite a recurrent theme within advertising. I definitely think this sort of thing is where a lot of the gender stereotypes have stemmed from, and continue to do. I think this sort of message has become a sort of joke now, but jokes aside, why should a whole group of humans be degraded just to please another?

this one is pretty self explanatory. shut up, yorkie 

The main themes of these ads are undoubtably dominance and power. This is apart mainly from the stances and how the men are posing with the females. The way each of the women are shown lower down, with the men above them looking down on them is a clear indication that the man is in control, and that the women is the inferior. 

"The varied dimensions of posture, position of bodies, location of body parts, height and depth of figures, all suggest that women are inferior, and men are superior" Scott A. Lukas

Something else that seemed to keep cropping up, was the idea of women being used as sex objects within advertising. Through a bit of research, its evident that sexualising woman to draw the audiences attention to the object being advertising is considered an effective sales tactic. I think something I need to research on is whether this actually works, does sex sell?

so these are a couple of adverts more directly related to my theme, I sort of knew there were going to existing adverts using women to advertise mens power tools, and I guess I was right. I didn't even realise it was possible to sexualise a power tool, and especially in a serious way as mine were intended to be more of a mock take, but it looks as though it is. 

A project proposal: written up

For the practical side of context of practise, I want to follow on from some of the themes I included in my essay, such as masculine and feminine gender stereotypes, but also try and progress further on a few more ideas which I spoke about briefly, such as the objectification and sexualisation of women (and men) and male and female ideals within advertising. These are a few topics that really interest me, so I feel creating them visually will be something I will enjoy, and even though they might be a bit of a challenge, I feel engaged enough to explore each possible angle of them to a good extent. There are two main theories I will base my ideas upon within my practical work, one of them being a piece of writing my William M. O'Barr titled 'Representations of masculinity and femininity in advertisements' and the other being a theory called 'the male gaze' by Laura Mulvey. Something else I feel would really help my visual outcomes is looking at the American Apparel adverts, and although this isn't a theory I think it will really help to inform my work.

In order to visually investigate this content I will explore already existing adverts with these underlying messages, and see how they are being visually portrayed. From this, I will visually explore these themes in my own way, and I feel like the best media to create these images would be collage. I haven't really use this technique of image making before, but I feel as though it will really tie in with this brief as a whole, and it's definitely something I need to do more of. I might consider tying another media as well as collaging as I get further into my visual journal and I think to aid my work I will need to look at other artists who have explored collage and see how they have gone about it.