Judith Butler describes gender as “an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts”. In other words, it is something learnt through repeated performance.
How useful is this idea in understanding gender is represented in both the Score and Maybelline advertising campaigns?Introduce the overall aim and argument that you are going to make
In this essay I am going to talk about understanding gender through the advertising campaigns of Score and Maybelline and also how identity is instituted through a stylized repetition of acts. Judith Butler suggests that gender is reinforced consistently through behaviour and performance, “an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts”. She also states “What it means to be a woman does not remain the same from decade to decade” meaning that the general society’s thoughts and expectations around women are constantly changing as time goes on. It is believed by many that gender is a concept strictly for male and female, however Judith Butler’s theory opposes this idea.
In opposition to Judith Butler’s theory, Laura Mulvey developed the theory of the male gaze, male gaze refers to the sexualized interpretation of the gaze in a way that sexualizes and objectifies women and empowers men, this supports the idea of negotiated identity which means the idea in which you come to an agreement of ‘who is who’. In terms of the idea of the male gaze, the Score advert could be similarly compared, this is due to the positioning of the female representation within the advert. The females are wearing minimal clothing and are all positioned in a way to suggest that they are praising the male character in order to indicate that their sole purpose is to pleasure the man. This can support the theory that gender roles were fixed around the 1970’s, as it indicates that women were confined to what they were allowed to do and how they were allowed to act. Jean Kilbourne researched and wrote a book on how females were seen in adverts, the idea of abuse and how institutional behaviour stems from sexualised female adverts. The book implied that the advertising industry continues to reinforce, and glamorize femininity. Femininity meaning a set of culturally defined characteristics. We can also link the Score advert to Jean Kilbourne, this is due to the idea that within the advert we can notice that the females are advertised in very specific way in order to ‘glamorise’ their femininity which is the exact concept Jean Kilbourne wrote about in her book ‘Killing us Softly’. They do this by making the females look ‘flawless’ and like the society’s definition of ‘beautiful’.
Additionally, the Score hair cream advert is a historical artefact from 1967, as such it can relate to gender roles, sexuality and the historical context of advertising techniques. 1967 was a period of slow transformation in western cultures with legislation about and changing attitudes to the role of women and men in society, something that the advert can be seen to negotiate. The first wave of feminism can be described with the quote ‘sexism was coined by analogy with the term racism in the American civil rights movement in the early 1960s. Defined simply, sexism refers to the systematic ways in which men and women are brought up to view each other antagonistically, on the assumption that the male is always superior to the female’. The Score advert can be similarly linked to this idea because we can see a total of five female figures holding up the male figure giving us the assumption that the male is superior to the females.
On the other hand, the idea of fluidity of identity is a more modern and up-to-date concept, this means the ability to change how you identify yourself. For example, gender is fluid, you can choose who to identify as. This supports Judith Butlers theory, who quotes “Biological anatomies do not determine our gender”. She concludes that “masculinity and femininity are not naturally given states, but instead are maintained by individuals through everyday acts” meaning that an individual is not born male or female, but your gender defines you through your actions every day. She also indicates that the general society’s thoughts and expectations around women are constantly changing as time goes on.
This theory is not suggested in the score advert, however, it can be represented in the more modern advert of Maybelline, this is because in the Maybelline advert we can assume that the tole of the female gender has changed over time. We make this assumption due to the fact that the gender roles are suggested to be more equal. Within the advert, we can see a homosexual male character with what is thought to be ‘feminine’ qualities and also a female character who is suggested to feel like a ‘boss’ towards the end of the advert. This can oppose the idea that gender roles are fixed and that men are superior to women. The theory of raunch culture is also demonstrated in this advert due to the fact that the female character is not being sexualised within the advert. ‘Raunch culture is the sexualised performance of women in the media that can play into male stereotypes of women as highly sexually available, where its performers believe they are powerful owners of their own sexuality’
The Maybelline advert is seen to demonstrate the third and fourth wave of feminism. The third wave of feminism was coined by Naomi Wolf as a response to the generation gap between the feminist movement of the 1960’s and ’70’s, challenging and re-contextualising some of the definitions of femininity that grew out. It saw women’s lives as intersectional and demonstrated a pluralism towards race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender and nationality when discussing feminism. It can be described as the ‘rebellion of younger women against what was perceived as the prescriptive, pushy and ‘sex negative’ approach of older feminists.’ This idea is demonstrated by the Maybelline advert by the fact that the female representation within the advertisement is not being sexualised or objectified meaning that she opposes the stereotype of what the first wave of feminism suggests what it means to be a ‘female’.
Overall, I think that Judith Butler’s description of gender as “an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts” helps us to understand how gender is represented more in the Maybelline advert than the score advert due to the fact that the Score hair cream advert opposes the idea that gender isn’t determined by biological anatomies.