Judith Butler describes gender as “an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts”. In other words, it is something learnt through repeated performance, Butler suggest that gender is not fixed however it is reinforced consistently through none verbal communication, Judith creates the idea that there aren’t specific aspects or qualities that make you gender specific, but that gender is only a title . You can choose and change your gender, and that whatever you do will not change who you are and who you identify yourself as. Judith Butler writes to identify and break gender stereotypes such as football being a male sport and/or makeup being feminine. As seen in this quote “our gender identities are not fixed objects; they are constituted as a result of our behaviours” and again “Our bodies or sex do not define our gendered identities”. Most people believe that gender is simply divided into male and female, but Butler claims that this is not the case, and that this can lead to misrepresentation. For example, in the score commercial, women are sexualized and objectified, whereas in the Maybelline “boss up” commercial, there are a variety of identities. Butler is a gender theorist who claims that gender is a performance in which everyone is portraying their own gender and that it is a fluid of identity, a term created by David Gauntlett for his own. The usage of identification is not gender-based, and I’ll talk about how gender and identity are represented in the Score and Maybelline commercials.
In contrast to Butler, Laura Mulvey identifies the sexualisation of femininity and female characters compared to male characters that we identify with due to the lack of sexualisation and the addition of development and characteristics shown to deepen their character in a lot of games and movies, Mulvey stated that female characters are forced to identity as passive objects to be looked at and desired compared to men’s representation which is more focused on how “manly” and strong their characters are. She also believes that because the majority of movie directors, game developers, big artists, and key people in the media are men, we view media through their eyes, resulting in the male gaze. An example would be panning the camera on a sexualized female scene in a film, or exaggerations of female body parts in a media game to show more depth to the character. This isn’t to say that male characters can’t be sexualized; it’s simply that female sexualization is more prevalent. If someone substituted a boy for a popular oversexualized female stance, it would still be viewed through the male gaze. The assumption that a sexualized style of seeing strengthens men and sexualized women is supported by the masculine gaze.
As a historical artifact from 1967, the Score hair cream advertisement can be productively examined by considering its historical, social, and cultural contexts, particularly as it relates to gender roles, sexuality, and the historical context of advertising techniques. 1967 can be considered as a period of gradual change in western societies, with legislation concerning and changing attitudes toward the roles of women and men in society, something that the advertisement appears to address. The first wave of feminism can be summarized by a quote: “Sexism was coined by analogy with the term racism in the early 1960s in the American civil rights movement.” Simply put, sexism is the systematic conditioning of men and women to perceive each other negatively, based on the idea 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.
Furthermore, Gauntlett’s concept of identity fluidity, the ability to change how you present yourself in any way you want is known as fluidity of identity. If you don’t want to look a specific way, identity fluidity gives you the power to modify your appearance and how you see yourself as a person. Not only that, but fluidity of identity also entails the ability to shift your behavior to something that is preferred or that may be classified as normal. The ability to change who you are as a person, from how you look to how you act, is known as fluid of identity. Gender, for example, is fluid; you may choose who you want to be. Butler’s theory is supported by this, as he states, “Biological anatomies do not determine our gender.”She concludes that masculinity and femininity are not naturally occurring states, but rather are maintained by humans via daily behaviors, implying that a person is neither born male nor female, but their gender is defined by their daily actions. Gauntlett made a comment about how men and women are shown differently in the media. Throughout the twentieth century, for example, images of aggressive women taking control of their life were progressively replacing those of submissive housewives, as exemplified by the Spice Girls’ “girl power.” Men’s energetic and confident representations were giving way to a more contemplative and emotionally sensitive interpretation of masculinity. Despite the fact that old binary representations continue to appear on magazine front covers, there is now a “great diversity of identities.” As a result of our willingness to adapt to new cultural standards, we do not always have a permanent identity.
This theory is not implied in the score advertisement, but it can be seen in the Maybelline “boss up” advertisement. This is because in the Maybelline “boss up” advertisement, we can assume that the representation of the female gender has evolved over time, and we can make this assumption because the gender roles are suggested to be more equal. Within the advertisement, there is a homosexual male celebrity (Manny Mua) with what appears to be feminine traits, as well as a female character who is represented as feeling like a “boss” after using the product, which is found near the end of the advertisement. This can be used to refute the assumption of set gender roles, as well as the historical notion that men are superior to women.
Maybelline’s commercial is thought to represent the third and fourth waves of feminism. Naomi Wolf coined third wave feminism in response to the age gap between the 1960s and 1970s feminist movements, criticizing and re-contextualizing some of the resulting notions of femininity. When debating feminism, it saw women’s lives as intersecting and exhibited a plurality toward race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender, and nationality. It can be described as a “rebellion of younger women” against what they saw as elder feminists’ prescriptive, aggressive, and “sex negative” stance. The Maybelline ad exemplifies this concept since the female depiction in the ad is neither sexualized or objectified in any manner, implying that she defies the stereotype of what it means to be a ‘female,’ as suggested by the first wave of feminism.
In conclusion, I believe Butler’s definition of gender as “an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts” helps people understand how gender is represented more clearly in the Maybelline ad than in the score ad, due to the score ad opposing the idea that gender is not determined by biological genders.
