Andre Sadhu 3/14/24
Stereotype in Advertising COMD 3504-D061
Keep Her Where She Belongs
Playboy, 1974
This ad from Weyenberg Massagic Shoes was run by Playboy magazine in 1974. The ad features the image of a woman lying nude on the ground near a manâs shoe accompanied by the tagline âKeep her where she belongs...â This ad uses various stereotyping techniques to convey a message of ownership and dominance of women by men to appeal to its audience.
Weyenbergâs target audience is exclusively American men of presumably higher wealth. The tagline âKeep her where she belongsâŠâ is a term that was used more frequently in the past regarding the maintenance of women in a particular role, usually in a dominating way. The ad also conveys its message through its use of specific icons. The featured image in the ad is a polysemic non-coded iconic message. The woman in the image is lying on the ground at a manâs shoe, giving the denotation of a woman being at the feet of her man when he wears Weyenberg Massagic Shoes. In other words, a man can bend the will of his woman and get her to do anything he wants by wearing Weyenberg. The Weyenberg shoe can be seen as a sign of dominance, as a way to have control. The woman also appears nude which can be seen as signifying a woman as a sex symbol although that shouldnât be too odd given the adâs target audience. However, one can argue that this too contributes to the idea of ownership over the women. The woman is also wearing a large ring on her finger. Given the concept of married women wearing rings, one could signify this as another sign of a manâs ownership of a woman. On the contrary, the woman is smiling, indicating she is happy in this position. This can contribute to false representation by assuming that any woman would be happy in this position. At the time this ad was released, that may have been more accepted by society but it could also have been the work of this kind of naturalization that conditioned women into agreeing with this, leading to a culture where this would be considered normal. This ultimately creates the signified of a man owning Weyenberg Massagic Shoes living the American dream of having his wife at his feet both figuratively and literally. Even though this ad is targeted to men, women who would have agreed with this could have brought this to their husbandâs attention. This is the impact of naturalizationâa society that collectively agrees with an idea to the point of understanding, let alone admiring something even if not meant for them.
Given the amount of time that has passed since the release of this ad, we as individuals and as a society have evolved and our semiotics have adjusted. People seeing this ad today for the first time would most likely receive this ad differently. The originally preferred reading was to get men to buy a specific brand of shoe through the reinforcement of cultural gender stereotypes. The designers of this ad were most likely under the impression that the use of chosen stereotypes would send a strong message to their consumers. It can be said that many men received that message based on a shared mental representation. Advertisements like this one reinforced existing stereotypes that were naturalized to the point of cultural acceptability. This contributes to a culture that believed that women were meant to serve men. My personal view on this ad is an oppositional reading because I live in a different time period where the representation in the ad greatly varies from my mental representation. Since the 1970s, signs, signifiers, along with other aspects of representation have been altered for varying reasons, creating a culture that is less tolerant of certain things that were previously deemed okay. Women have become more independent since then, being seen less as property and feeling less of a need to please men. Advertisements aimed toward men have since strayed away from using opposite sex-interaction to appeal to their consumers albeit not entirely. The signified would be different because people have been taught different values and would thus reject a message represented this way.
To summarize, this Weyenberg Massagic Shoe ad from Playboy in 1974 makes use of gender-based stereotypes which was common representation at the time to appeal to their consumers. Everything from the tagline to the non-coded iconic message were a product of its time. Our culture has changed significantly since then, leaving the previously accepted representation and naturalization of gender norms of the 1970s obsolete.
Works Cited
Keep Her Where She Belongs
https://www.vintag.es/2022/08/keep-her-where-she-belongs.html
Barthes, Roland (1977) âRhetoric of the Imageâ Image/Music/Text, New York: Hill and Wang, 1977, 33-7.
Hall, Stuart (2013) âThe Work of Representationâ p.2-5
Hall, Sean. This Means This, This Means That : A User’s Guide to Semiotics, Laurence King Publishing, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/citytech-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1876119.
Created from citytech-ebooks on 2021-09-01 04:48:35.
Hall, Sean. This Means This, This Means That : A User’s Guide to Semiotics, Laurence King Publishing, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/citytech-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1876119.
Created from citytech-ebooks on 2021-09-01 04:50:49.
Copyright © 2012. Laurence King Publishing. All rights reserved.
Final Draft
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QzOoy0Eshrh1KBKplidYkN_sp7SZNech0LjE2qGJ5nw/edit?usp=sharing
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