OUDG501: Study Task 4

Write a media representation of femininity/masculinity using the text given. 5 quotes and 500 words.

 This Hansaplast advert is an excellent representation of women, by men, for men. The women's gaze focused away from the viewer, just like a nude painting, constructed to be submissive to the spectator. 'The look confers power; women's inability to return such a critical and aggressive look is a sign of subordination, of being the recipients of another's assessment.' (Coward, 2000, P33) Women are represented like this to help reaffirm the idea of the man being in control, as they are seen as the dominant sex. This advert is relating the product to the image by suggesting the male viewer can achieve this power over women by buying the product. 

 The submissive behaviour of the women shown in the advert allows the male gaze to analyse and assess her body without any objection. 'Sex-at-a-distance is the only complete secure relation which men can have with women.'  (Coward, 2000, P34) Men in society are becoming more comfortable with fantasy than real life in the comfort that this allows them, the spectator, to not risk rejection. 'Perhaps other forms of contact are too unsettling.' (Coward, 2000, P34) This distanced behaviour is only further supported and continued the more media and advertising perpetuate these representations of women.

 However, although the Hansaplast advert does target men, it also presents an image for women strive towards. The woman shown in the advert is one that is accepted by western society to be aesthetically beautiful: slim, toned and healthily tanned. 'Because women are compelled to make themselves attractive in certain ways, and those ways involve submitting to the culture's beliefs about appropriate sexual behaviour, women's appearances are laden down with cultural values, and women have to form their identities within these values or, with difficulty, against them.'  (Coward, 2000, P36) The advert builds on the anxiety of women to be sexually attractive, just like in the advert the woman obviously is. 'Women's relation to these cultural ideals, and therefore to their own images, is more accurately described as a relation to narcissistic damage.'  (Coward, 2000, P39)

 On the other hand, this advert isn't just targeting women's self consciousness. The product is built around the male anxiety of wanting to last longer during sex, long enough to leave tan lines. 'Strict control over women's sexuality seems to be a characteristic of male-dominated societies' (Coward, 2000, P35) Men want to feel that they are in control over women at all times and any suggestion that they are somehow weaker damages their confidence and pride in their manhood. Therefore this advert plays to this deep anxiety that men have so that they remain the dominant sex.