Representations of Females

Judith Butler’s TheoryButler argues we are born a certain sex, but gender is performance. A

man is not inherently masculine or a female inherently feminine. We

perform aspects of different genders. Gender does not exist outside of

these performances. For example, the act of wearing make up defines a

person’s gender, rather than their gender defining the act.

This does apply to our production. This is because the female will dress

herself in pretty clothes to perform her gender expectation of what it is

to be feminine. However, if we were to feature specific trends such as

dungarees, then our model would be playing with the idea of gender

performance, as dungarees is stereotypically a more masculine trend.

Having said that, having a whole idea of ‘fashion’ is stereotypically a

feminine idea, as caring about clothes and the way you look is

representing a female thing to do. Having said that, for example; the act

of wearing make up defines a persons gender, rather than the gender

defining the act could be applied here as there can be a number of

models who are very unstereotypical regarding their interests and the

way they act, for example.

Summary..Representations of females in advertising is very broad,

as there are a lot of aspects to consider. We think that

Gauntlett’s and Butler’s theory is more convincing in

relation to our production because we feel the female

should be empowered. Although it is contradictory, we

do want the female to have a passive nature, and be in

the male gaze. This is because we want the target

audience, females ages 16-25, to be more attracted to

our product, and by doing this, Gauntlett’s empowered

female idea would be very attractive towards our

audience, as well as being in the male gaze as

teen/early twenties girls like to feel noticed, and being

in the male gaze would make them more drawn towards

buying our product. Butler’s theory states that gender is

a performance, therefore this relates to our advert a lot

because the model is performing the female gender by

being interested in clothes.