Women in adverts

Noticeably all the adverts are selling food and cleaning products as a woman’s traditional role is to be a housewife which these adverts conform to. Shockingly, pizza advert uses a blunt portrayal of the division of labour with the women being subject to her husband’s dominance. Her husband orders her yelling ‘chop chop’ to make a pizza and she gleefully makes it despites his rude attitude towards her. Stark contrast between the hard working rushed of her feet women and her lay about television junky man but the advert depicts these opposing positions as socially acceptable.

Sex objects

During the montage a modestly dressed young women rips of her skirt when she spills drink on it. It positions her from a formal woman to a sex object, maintaining that women are simply there to serve men.

Similarly, at the beginning of the adverts a women is attempting to fit in her jeans but she has clearly put on weight. Therefore she will have to diet in order to please her man- suggesting that women should satisfy their men and live up to men’s expectations.

Housewives (adverts include tide, whirlpool, hovers, Mr Muscle etc)
In one of the adverts a child drops the drink but as she goes to clean it the mum says ‘’It’s alright, I’ll clean up’’. Women are consistently being shown as domestic Goddesses that are satisfied with their role as house slave. These adverts are also inaccurate as they assume that all women stay at work and ignore the fact that an increasing number of women are now in paid labour and this figure is rising dramatically. Despite the family offering to assist the mum in hamburger helper as they say ‘’let’s give mum a hand’’. However, it is ‘mum’ who is doing the chores and is the leader whilst it is the other family member that help. Although ‘mum’ has full responsibility nobody offer to do the chores for her.

Stereotypes like multi-tasking are also displayed in the advert whilst the women is hovering she is carrying her baby. The ideal woman is illustrated as superhuman and somewhat flawless. The underlying message further exemplifies that perfection equals being a domestic Godesses and submissive to your partner; which the female voice encourages by telling women to behave in this manner.

Unusually even in cleaning adverts patriarchy is being promoted as the women is told by the controlling male voice over ‘’You’ll never clean the same way again’’ Mr Muscle rescues her from the burdens of cleaning. Even in areas that are considers a women’s domain it is men that teach women the way succeed.



The lighting mainly focuses the models breast to enlarge them and make the model appear more curvaceous. Moreover, dehumanisation ignores the women’s contributions and intellectual capacity to portray them in an animalistic manner, for instance the women liking the floor. The faceless women does not allow them to have an identity and groups them as all the same.

Key quotations
’We are exposed to over 2,000 adverts a day, constituting perhaps the most educational force in society’- Jean Kilbourne

‘In an extremely competitive environment, you kind of go back to T & A (tits and ass)’’- Bugle Boy clothes publicists

‘We often find no representational connections in contemporary advertising. One of the common registers of print advertising is of the naked or sexually-posed woman selling a product’- cf. Lazier Smith 1989, Furham and Bitar 1993.

‘Clearly, the construction of masculinity involves a dual defamation of women as sex objects and a maintenance of male sexual superiority.’- cf Hood 1995

Turkish delight also draws on typecast to sell the product. Props theory is applicable to this advertisement, the women is waiting for her prince to rescue her whilst she is stuck in the desert (damsel in distress). Therefore, the man is the Proppian hero whilst the woman is the Proppian princess; a direct binary opposition is being displayed which mirrors patriarchal ideologies. The central focus of the advert is the woman’s face which the camera often subject to close-ups again her main purpose is to be ‘eye candy’. Continuous shots focusing on her eyes relate to the idea of mysteriousness which is significant as it is correlates to the Arabian theme.



Shake and vac uses obvious stereotypes of women to sell their product. The way the woman prances and cleans reflects the notion of multi-tasking; suggesting that the ideal housewife can do everything at once. Stereotypically, bursting into song is associated with women as it represents femininity implicitly indicating that perfection means living up to generalisations about females. Although the women is wearing modest attire her jives and beauty highlight that her only purpose is to serve as ‘eye candy’ because she is being projected through the male gaze (Laura Mulvey). Constant zooms on her legs further exemplify her objectification because the central focus is her body. Lastly, her blonde hair conveys a ditzy persona and despite the absence of men their presence is still felt as her cleaning ritual is ultimately to please her husband.