Simple Driving

By SJH / December 2023

There is no true representation of people or events in advertising, only a fixed meaning assigned by advertisers. These meanings are often delivered through linguistic, non-coded iconic, and coded iconic signs. Advertising has typically been a field dominated by upper-middle-class white men. The stereotypes they perpetuated in advertising during the 19th and 20th centuries are less of a reflection on the true nature of society but on those advertisers’ conscious and unconscious attempts to legitimize their power. The Mini Automatic ad is a demonstration of stereotypical gender roles being perpetuated by coded messages in advertising, displaying women as incompetent, frivolous, sexual objects. Those responsible for the creation of this advertisement prioritized the degradation of femininity over the image of their product. 

Often the first message we receive as viewers of an advertisement is a linguistic one, delivered through the accompanying captions and body copy. The linguistic message of this ad reads, “The Mini Automatic. For Simple Driving”. The denoted, or literal, meaning of this is clear. The Mini Automatic is a car that makes driving simple. Because of our cultural context and myths that have become naturalized by a long history of this rhetoric, we can also read between the lines and find a connotated meaning associated with this text. The word simple is coded. Derived from the Latin simplex, which means literally onefold, simple brings with it connotations of naivety, unsophistication, stupidity, and shallowness. Due to learned cultural connotations, the linguistic message at the time might have come across as tongue-in-cheek. Not only is the car so simple a woman can drive it, it infers that the car itself is as simple as the woman pictured in it. 

Looking beyond the linguistic message, we see what is being literally represented by the photograph. This is referred to as a non-coded iconic message and requires no learned cultural knowledge to understand. What we can see depicted is a woman sitting behind the wheel of a car. Her hands are positioned in the foreground of the photograph gripping the wheel with red nails and fingers adorned with jewelry. Her hair and makeup display similar shades of red. Her eyes are open wide and she is frozen in an exaggerated state of biting her lip. These are elements we can see literally represented to the viewer. These non-coded iconic messages may not be given a second of conscious thought by the viewer, but because of the cultural context we live in, and the naturalized myths we live by, each of these literal iconic representations carries concepts beyond what is being visualized. This is referred to as coded iconic messaging. 

The first of these coded iconic messages is told through the woman’s hands. The rings on her fingers serve as a symbol of wealth and status. The amount and size of those rings along with her nails, also carry connotations of frivolity, signifying that while the woman is portrayed as wealthy, beautiful, and fashionable, she is also incompetent and fragile. This kind of portrayal of women can be described as benevolent sexism. Benevolent sexism, in contrast with hostile sexism, operates on a more covert level. It is the set of attitudes that women need to be protected and taken care of by men, making men and women fundamentally better suited for different roles in society. These gender stereotypes can appear harmless on the surface but, at their core, embody more harmful stereotypes that women are inferior to men (Leaper and Gutierrez ). It is also important to note the positioning of the woman’s hands. The fact that she has both hands on the wheel signifies that great effort and care are required for her to drive. Even though the Mini Automatic is simple to drive, the woman in the advertisement has to put her full focus into the act. Along with the visual cues of the woman’s hands, her facial expressions are coded as well. In the photograph, her mouth is fixed in an exaggerated overbite. This expression carries connotations of child-like naivety, incompetence, and simplicity. It works to perpetuate the stereotype that women aren’t capable of traditionally masculine tasks like driving a car. In the photograph, the woman’s eyes are wide open. This expression is a sign of shock, awe, and fear — like that of a deer in the headlights. A deer in the headlights is helpless and at the mercy of the machine. Positioning the woman as such metaphorically takes her out of the driver’s seat and away from any position of power. 

Red accents are seen throughout the advertisement, in the woman’s nails, her lips, cheeks, and hair, and in the car pictured in the bottom right corner. Red, when contextualized with the presence of a woman, carries connotations of female sexuality. Paired with the other coded messages in this advertisement, a persona is created, one that is sexualized, naive, and incompetent. 

All of these coded messages work to perpetuate myths about gender roles. In perpetuating these stereotypes, the advertisers positioned their product as something men would find emasculating to drive themselves and that women would find patronizing. Whether they were unable to remove themselves from their own gender bias or were maliciously attempting to perpetuate harmful stereotypes is unclear, but in doing so, they devalued their product as much as they devalued femininity. 

Works Cited

Barthes, R. (1964) Rhetoric of the Image. Communications, 4, 40-51. https://doi.org/10.3406/comm.1964.1027

Fisher, Mrs, and Moana Luri. “Media Studies – Stuart Hall’s Representation Theory – Simple Guide For Students & Teachers.” YouTube, 11 July 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxK5CXfKSCI. Accessed 10 November 2023.

“For Simple Driving.” Persuasion and Influence, 9 February 2013, http://persuasion-and-influence.blogspot.com/2013/02/for-simple-driving.html. Accessed 10 November 2023.

Goffman, Erving. “Gender Advertisements.” 22 September 2021, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/citytech-ebooks/reader.action?docID=3441523&ppg=21. Accessed 10 November 2023.

Hall, Sean. “This Means This, This Means That : A User’s Guide to Semiotics.” 22 September 2021, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/citytech-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1876119. Accessed 10 November 2023.

Leaper, Campbell, and Brenda C. Gutierrez. “Benevolent Sexism.” Science Direct, 2011, https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/benevolent-sexism. Accessed November 2023.“Untitled.” Public Collectors, http://www.publiccollectors.org/Goffman_Gender.pdf. Accessed 10 November 2023.