Not a step further
Images of Women: The intention is laudable, but the execution is too academic: A German studies scholar deciphers and interprets female «body codes» in advertising.
Images of women The intention is honorable, but the execution is too academic: a Germanist deciphers and interprets female "body codes" in advertising If you believe Nicole Wilk, the emancipation movement has left art directors unscathed. Her diagnosis: although clearly sexist advertisements have largely disappeared, the female body has become so independent as a symbolic hollow form that any meaning can now be implanted in it. Wilk considers this subtilization to be more dangerous than hurtful, but at least vulnerable discrimination, and in her study of 100 relevant advertisements from German-speaking countries published in 2000, she discovered a real system of paradoxes. The family woman is pitted against the career woman or the skinny girl against the high achiever. A few identifying features are enough: Deuxpièces and cell phone are synonymous with "business woman", regardless of whether the setting is a Venetian gondola or a boardroom. And in the case of childlike women, being visibly underweight is enough to send the message that being thin is beautiful. According to "body codes", the fact that those who are spindly are also weak-willed and powerless forms the backbone of an "ideal of weakness" concealed as an ideal of beauty.
Wilk wants to raise awareness of the power of (female) body signs. And offers a heavy conceptual armory that is fed with insights from Ferdinand de Saussure, the forefather of sign systems, to Roland Barthes and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. However, the Germanist and social psychologist's main mentor is the US philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 - 1914). In contrast to de Saussure's dualistic theory of signs, Peirce developed a triadic model that includes a real object shaped by experience in addition to the sign and its meaning. Using the philosopher's semiotic triangle, Wilk attempts to show that and how advertisers stage the female body: A woman's hand gliding gently over a car emphasizes its desirable form; a laptop tattooed on a female restraint lends a sexy fetish character to technical equipment.
So far, so plausible. It's just a shame that the academic jargon makes the book rather unreadable. In addition, there are only six illustrations of analyzed advertising subjects on the 300-plus pages. So for the remaining 96 motifs, you have to rely on their descriptions and (re)construct the image mentally.
This is doubly annoying because the deliberate decision not to reproduce the motifs analyzed is completely disavowed by the provocative book cover. What is unforgivable, however, is the complete lack of positive examples or at least alternative suggestions. As a result, feminist advertising research at best benefits from this treatise; communicative emancipation, however, has not taken a single step forward.
> Body codes. The many faces of femininity in advertising by Nicole M. Wilk. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/Main. 2002.
324 pages, Fr. 50.50.
Mari Serrano
Wilk wants to raise awareness of the power of (female) body signs. And offers a heavy conceptual armory that is fed with insights from Ferdinand de Saussure, the forefather of sign systems, to Roland Barthes and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. However, the Germanist and social psychologist's main mentor is the US philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 - 1914). In contrast to de Saussure's dualistic theory of signs, Peirce developed a triadic model that includes a real object shaped by experience in addition to the sign and its meaning. Using the philosopher's semiotic triangle, Wilk attempts to show that and how advertisers stage the female body: A woman's hand gliding gently over a car emphasizes its desirable form; a laptop tattooed on a female restraint lends a sexy fetish character to technical equipment.
So far, so plausible. It's just a shame that the academic jargon makes the book rather unreadable. In addition, there are only six illustrations of analyzed advertising subjects on the 300-plus pages. So for the remaining 96 motifs, you have to rely on their descriptions and (re)construct the image mentally.
This is doubly annoying because the deliberate decision not to reproduce the motifs analyzed is completely disavowed by the provocative book cover. What is unforgivable, however, is the complete lack of positive examples or at least alternative suggestions. As a result, feminist advertising research at best benefits from this treatise; communicative emancipation, however, has not taken a single step forward.
> Body codes. The many faces of femininity in advertising by Nicole M. Wilk. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/Main. 2002.
324 pages, Fr. 50.50.
Mari Serrano
