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Consumption, Markets and Culture
Vol. 7, No. 1, March 2004, pp. 21–52
Mirrors of Masculinity: Representation

and Identity in Advertising Images
Jonathan E. Schroeder & Detlev Zwick
Through explication of a visual research method, this paper theorizes how masculine iden-
[email protected]
Department
JonathanE.Schroeder
00000March
Consumption ofMarkets
2004
Industrial
10.1080/1025386042000168000
GCMC041002.sgm
1025-3866
Original
Taylor
712004 &Article
Francis Ltd andEconomics
(Print)/1477-223X
Culture and ManagementRoyal Institute of TechnologyS-100 44 StockholmSweden
(Online)
tity interacts with consumption—of imagery, products, desires, and passions in advertising
and consumer culture. We analyze the male body as a discursive “effect” created at the
intersection of consumption and several marketing discourses such as advertising, market
segmentation, and visual communication, balancing between brand strategy—what the
marketer intends—and brand community—the free appropriation of meaning by the
market. The paper’s contribution rests in extending previous work on male representation
into historical, ontological, and photographic realms, providing a necessary complement
between understanding advertising meaning as residing within managerial strategy or
wholly subsumed by consumer response. We argue that greater awareness of the connec-
tions between the traditions and conventions of visual culture and their impact on the
production and consumption of advertising images leads to enhanced ability to understand
how advertising works as a representational system and signifying practice.
Keywords: Advertising; Imagery; Identity; Representation; Gender; Masculinity
Introduction
Consumption plays a major role in the construction, maintenance, and representation
of male bodies. Almost all products are gendered in a practice of normative sexual dual-
ism reinforced and maintained within the interlocking cultural institutions of market-
ing communication and market segmentation. As an engine of consumption,
advertising plays a strong role in promulgating dualistic gender roles and prescribing
sexual identities. Most ad campaigns invoke gender identity, drawing their imagery
Jonathan E. Schroeder is Professor, Director of Marketing at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm,
Sweden. Detlev Zwick is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Marketing at the Schulich School of
Business, York University, Canada. Correspondence to: Jonathan E. Schroeder, Department of Industrial
Economics and Management, KTH-The Royal Institute of Technology, S-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden. E-mail:
[email protected]
ISSN 1025-3866 (print)/ISSN 1477-223X (online) © 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/1025386042000212383
22 J. E. Schroeder & D. Zwick
primarily from the stereotyped iconography of masculinity and femininity.1 In this
way, masculinity and femininity interact smoothly with the logic of the market-adver-
tising representations and consumption practices provide a meaningful system of differ-
ence, which has established strong limits to the possibilities of male and female
consumer ontologies (e.g., Leiss 1983; Lury and Warde 1997; Nixon 1996). Within this
system, iconic masculine activities such as shaving the face, driving fast cars, having a
hearty appetite, smoking cigars, and drinking liquor are juxtaposed to feminine visions
of applying makeup, driving a minivan, eating “light,” doing the laundry, and decorat-
ing houses.
This paper analyzes the cultural construction of masculinity via a look at the male
body and its visual representation in advertising. We focus on the way contemporary
images express and inscribe a number of contradictory conceptions of masculine iden-
tity. We bring ontological considerations to bear on advertising imagery, that is, how
representation, consumption, and identity intersect to construct, maintain, and circu-
late conceptions of masculinity via advertising imagery, segmentation strategies, and
the logic of the market. We place contemporary advertising imagery into a historical
context that encompasses photography, fine art, and graphic design within what we call
a visual genealogy. We emphasize how ads produce and manipulate social signifiers
rather than how individuals appropriate their symbolic value (cf. Ritzer 1998).
Through explication of a visual approach, in conjunction with recent work in critical
consumer research, we theorize how masculine identity interacts with consumption—
of imagery, products, desires, and passions in advertising and consumer culture. Repre-
sentations do not merely “express” masculinity, rather, they play a central role in form-
ing conceptions of masculinity and help construct market segments such as the New
Man, playboys, connoisseurs, and lads, in the British vernacular (see Elliott, Eccles, and
Hodgson 1993; Kuhn 1982; Mort 1996). We analyze the consuming male body as a
discursive “effect” created at the intersection of consumer practice and several market-
ing discourses such as advertising imagery, product availability, and market segmenta-
tion strategies. Moreover, we situate consumer identity within the philosophical
concerns of identity, drawing on several theorists to develop the notion of ontology in
contemporary advertising (e.g., Borgerson 2001; Borgerson and Schroeder 2002; Butler
1990, 1993; Gordon 1995, 2003). Somewhat novel in considerations of “surface” issues
like popular culture and advertising imagery, our deployment of “depth” analysis high-
lights the importance we place on advertising roles within contemporary intellectual
debates, such as subject construction, representation, and gender. We attempt to
balance on the line between structuralism and poststructuralism, drawing theoretical
perspectives informed by poststructural developments, but insisting on some cultural
and historical qualifications that ground our interpretative work.
Our contributions center around three interrelated concerns. First, we add to recent
analyses of masculinity in advertising within research on consumer identity that signals
a growing awareness that masculinity, like femininity, is constructed, codified, and
contested within marketing imagery. Often, research on gender in advertising and
consumer culture emphasizes femininity and female identity, which may inadvertently
suggest that femininity is constructed in ways that masculinity is not, as well as foster
Consumption, Markets and Culture 23
ontological links between female identity and consumption. We interpret masculine
images in contemporary ads as particularly useful sites of identity formation and
contestation. In other words, advertising images provide partial answers to the ques-
tion “What does it mean to be a man?” (Stern 2003). Second, we develop an under-
standing of consumption via our focus on representation as social signification,
particularly as it relates to basic issues of identity and its connections to consumer
goods. We draw on interpretive methods, as introduced in the consumer behavior
literature by Scott (1994), Stern (1993) and others (e.g., Hirschman 1989; McQuarrie
and Mick 1999; O’Donohoe 2000; Stern and Schroeder 1994). However, visuality is
often overlooked within consumer research and marketing scholarship (cf. O’Guinn
2004; Schroeder 2002). Third, we present an interdisciplinary matrix that draws on
philosophy, consumer research, and visual studies to approach complex issues in
consumption, markets, and culture, placing previous work on male representation into
historical perspective, thus providing (missing) conceptual links between advertising
as managerial strategy, on one hand, or as creative consumer reading, on the other.
We begin with the notion that masculinity is—semiotically—irrevocably connected
with, opposed to and in relation to femininity. We pose questions in relation to the
larger socio-cultural meaning of advertising images, in particular struggles over the
representation of gender and gender roles within gendered target markets, and argue
that advertising imagery constitutes ubiquitous and influential bodily representations
in public space, incorporating exercises of power, surveillance and normativity within
the consumer spectacle. We focus on gender relations and gendered relations, rather
than on difference per se, and pay particular attention to bodies and bodily represen-
tations. We suggest that advertising imagery helps provide consumer solutions to
gender tensions and struggles over representing idealized masculine consumers, in
particular the crisis of masculinity.
An art historical approach grounds our analysis, focusing attention on how the male
body has been historically portrayed and the way this genealogy colors representational
conventions in contemporary advertising. A visual viewpoint illuminates advertising
representations infused with visual, historical, and rhetorical presence and power.
First, we briefly review the representation concept within consumer research, then
introduce an ontological perspective that frames our theoretical approach. We discuss
several key antecedents within the historical genealogy of bodily representations that
we believe are essential in understanding contemporary conceptions of male body
images. Then we present in-depth analyses of contemporary print advertising images
as a departure point to analyze how they conflate sexuality, masculinity and consump-
tion in the fulfillment of desire. At a basic level, these images visually represent a shift
from men as producers to men as consumers. The examples, drawn from influential
magazines like Time, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker, are meant to
be illustrative, not representative, iconic, and not typical. Whereas these publications
target particular market segments—and indeed the ads help construct and develop
these segments—we are more interested in the subject as embodied within the ads
themselves than the consuming subjects the ads target. In this way, we join recent
research that considers ads as cultural artifacts as well as managerial tools. We speculate
on various interpretive stances for these images, providing an expansive reading
grounded in visual analysis. We close with a discussion of advertising interpretation
and its relation to constructions of masculine identity, as well as broader representa-
tional issues within consumer research.
Advertising, Consumption and Representation

The analytic approach presented here makes three interrelated assumptions about
advertising images. First, ads can be considered aesthetic objects. This assumption
acknowledges the creativity and thought that goes into the production of most national
advertising campaigns, and how consumption has become aestheticized via style, fash-
ion, and integration into what has been called the art-culture system (Lury 1996).
Second, ads are socio-political artifacts. These two categories—aesthetic and political—
are often constituted as mutually exclusive. Our analysis attempts to locate advertise-
ments within a complex visual signifying system that includes the inter-related
aesthetic and political domains. Third, we situate advertising within a system of visual
representation that creates meaning within the circuit of culture—often beyond what
may be intended by the photographer, advertising agency or commissioning company.
This “circuit” assumes that advertising both creates and contributes to culture (Hall
1980). Our interdisciplinary visual method does not necessarily compete for authority
with other approaches. Instead, it represents a useful, distinct level of analysis, partic-
ularly suited to sorting out meaning construction in visual images (see Bordo 1997;
Hall 1997; Leiss, Kline, and Jhally 1990; Schroeder and Borgerson 1998; Stern and
Schroeder 1994).
Advertising discourse both reflects and creates social norms. As one critic points out:
“the ways in which individuals habitually perceive and conceive their lives and the
social world, the alternatives they see as open to them, and the standards they use to
judge themselves and others are shaped by advertising, perhaps without their ever
being consciously aware of it” (Lippke 1995, 108). In other words, advertising repre-
sentations influence cultural and individual conceptions of identity, and must be
understood as the result of changing social and cultural practices. Consequently, our
overarching framework views meaning—in advertising as well as art—as the result of
historical contingencies. We are concerned with recent developments in representing
masculinity, influenced by the women’s movement, shifting patterns of labor partici-
pation (for both men and women), relaxing standards, at least in the West, of represen-
tational norms, and sophisticated, focused target marketing that often isolates and
codifies consumer identity.
Research on advertising representation commonly focuses on the internal content of
advertisements—what the ad claims, how it links the product to consumer benefits, or
the design of the ad. These are important issues. However, advertising also acts as a
representational system that produces meaning outside the realm of the advertised
product (e.g., Goldman 1992). For example, the production of taste remains one of
advertising’s most important objectives. The close relationship between social class and
taste has diminished during the rise of consumer culture, interfering with people’s
ability for “naturally competent selection” of appropriate products, practices, and
preferences (Bourdieu 1984; Holt 1997).
Many contemporary ads make little mention of the advertised product or service.
Visual arrangements are such that the advertised good often drops into the background
while highly abstract connections are made between the models, a lifestyle and the
brand. Viewers are asked to transfer meaning from the look of the people in the ad—
their image, lifestyle, and physical appearance—onto the product (Williamson 1978).
Important contributors to meaning are art historical referents that inform and influ-
ence—consciously or not—the creation and reception of the ad (Schroeder 2002).
Sociologist Erving Goffman pointed out that ads impact directly on lived experience
by normatively limiting our conceptions of identity, right and wrong, and the good life
(1979). Critically, ads influence how we think about masculinity and femininity, what
is sexy, and what will be seen as attractive by desired others (see Schroeder and Borgerson
2003). Goffman showed that “every physical surround, every box for social gatherings,
necessarily provides materials than can be used in the display of gender and the affir-
mation of gender identity” (1997, 207). Standard advertising poses generally signal
men’s dominance over submissive women, be it through physical, financial, or psycho-
logical superiority (Kolbe and Albanese 1996; Nixon 1996; Schroeder and Borgerson
1998). By focusing upon behavior as performance he challenged the distinction between
the image and lived experience. Goffman’s dramaturgical metaphors for understanding
representation in social interaction have been influential, particularly within contem-
porary gender theory (Tseëlon 1995). His work paved the way toward Judith Butler’s
influential philosophical analysis of identity; Goffman prefigured the discourse of
performativity and gender (Butler 1990, 1993).
Masculinity and Representational Practices

Advertising images have typically drawn upon clear cultural categories to depict
gendered consumer selves: “advertising agencies have to learn, then employ, quite
specific cultural vocabularies as a precondition for advertising specific consumption
practices to particular consumer groups […] Ad agencies must acquire knowledge of
consumers’ symbolic meaning-systems in order to invest the advertising development
process with its culturally meaningful potentiality” (Hackley 2002, 215–16). However,
signs of “transgression” have appeared on the representational horizon. Contemporary
ads that depict men’s bodies in compelling and provocative ways suggest a change in
the limits posited by the traditional male gaze of advertising.
In a recent article, Maurice Patterson and Richard Elliott discuss male representa-
tion in advertising, and argue that some contemporary images “invert” the male gaze.
Men are increasingly encouraged to view their own bodies as sites of identity manage-
ment: “consumers” bodies are the products of labor (body work) that necessitates
consumption and the use of consumer goods, and simultaneously, through visualiza-
tion, their bodies act as advertisements for such labor” (Patterson and Elliott 2002,
234). They claim that advertising representations of the male body responded to femi-
nism in part by reinscribing masculine identity via the man’s man, or lads, typified by
new male lifestyle magazines like Maxim, Men’s Health, and Gear, that have aggres-
sively revived stereotypical male tropes of babes, brawn, and beer.
Furthermore, they suggest, this inversion of the male gaze provokes psychological
reflection: “when the gaze is turned on itself, men are more likely to move through a
range of responses such as rejection, identification and desire” (Patterson and Elliott
2002, 241). This stance corresponds with Hirschman and Thompson’s model of adver-
tising relationships, emulation, criticism, and personalization (1997), where rejection
functions similarly to criticism, identification to personalization, and desire to emula-
tion. It remains unclear whether the inverted gaze causes these reactions in men.
Perhaps the larger process of constructing men as consumers—of which the inverted
gaze plays an important part—ultimately influences male responses to advertising
images. Patterson and Elliott conclude that hegemonic masculinity adopted to recent
societal changes with “the increasing feminization of masculinities, as men are encour-
aged to partake in the carnival of consumption, to become concerned about their
appearance, to get in touch with their emotions, and as male bodies become objects of
display subject to the male gaze” (Patterson and Elliott 2002, 241). Of course, many
upper-class men have long been concerned with their appearance; and for certain
men—actors, politicians, models—looks remain a particularly salient feature of iden-
tity. We contend that the gaze has expanded, rather than inverted. A look at the broader
historical context of male representation helps clarify and contextualize their impor-
tant study.
Our approach focuses more on visual issues within male representation; we sketch a
visual genealogy of images concentrating on the cultural production of codes, apart
from managerial intent and consumer interpretation. We turn to allied fields of philos-
ophy, visual studies, and art history for insight into visual theory and representational
practices. We ask, what are the visual and cultural factors that inform contemporary
advertising images and brand campaigns? We believe that branding and advertising
researchers, who focus more heavily on corporate strategy on one hand, and consumer
response on the other, often overlook these issues. These are important considerations,
but each needs to be contextualized within culture (e.g., Hall 1997; Schroeder 2002;
Scott 1994; Stern 1996; Weiss 1999). To understand the role of these complex cultural
processes, we must delve into marketing’s ontological underpinnings. In this endeavor,
we concur with Holt’s recent assessment that “such knowledge doesn’t come from
focus groups or ethnography or trend reports—the marketer’s usual means for ‘getting
close to the customer’. Rather, it comes from a cultural historian’s understanding of
ideology as it waxes and wanes, a sociologist’s charting of the topography of contradic-
tions the ideology produces, and a literary critic’s expedition into the culture that
engages these contradictions” (Holt 2003, 49). To which we would add, a philosopher’s
engagement with the historical and theoretical significance of representation and
identity, and an art historian’s knowledge of the visual genealogy of representational
practices.
We do not mean to suggest that we will take an imperial view of images, dictating
what and under what conditions they mean certain things to consumers. Rather, we
sketch the visual genealogy of contemporary images, focusing on three salient historical
referents, in a process that Richard Sennett describes as postholing—digging deeply into
several points in a historical continuum and using these as a basis for theoretical work
(Sennett 1977). Our postholes include the iconography of the fine art portrait, the
nineteenth-century rage of carte de visite portraiture, and the less popular, but perhaps
more long-lasting tradition of male pin-up photography. Throughout the paper, we
privilege the visual as a manifestation of consumer and male desire.
We acknowledge that we are working with a restricted domain of masculine identity,
circumscribed by the West, centered on the US and its mainstream media, and
bounded by race and class. Gender politics are changing, many people resist sexist
stereotypes, and there now exists a myriad of gender identities (cf. Schroeder 2003;
Thompson and Haytko 1997; Thompson and Hirschman 1995). Furthermore, mascu-
linity is a specific cultural construction—a fiction, but one with political effects (Burgin
1996). However, despite the potential for transgressive readings, we contend that
cultural messages within the advertising discourse still function largely to reinforce
traditional gender roles and to limit the consumer body to conservative forms of
masculinity and femininity. Thus, if we can isolate the building blocks of masculine
identity, we can begin to think critically about the power discourse of advertising in
constructing the masculine (consumer) body. We are then able to illuminate the limits
advertising imposes onto the possibilities of male ontologies but also, how these limits
shift within culture and across time.
Identity
Much previous research has discussed how advertising messages often restrict repre-
sentations of the consuming body by limiting and structuring possibilities of masculine
and feminine consumption (e.g., Barthel 1988; Elliot, Eccles, and Hodgson 1993;
Goldman 1992; Kates 1999; Nixon 1996; Schroeder and Borgerson 1998; Stern 1993).
One result is that advertising representations create mechanisms that simultaneously
reinforce and (partly) conceal traditional notions of gender relations, that is, ad imag-
ery often makes gender roles seem transparent, natural—just there (Goffman 1979).
Recent work on issues such as the inverted gaze, oppositional readings, queering imag-
ery, and consumer resistance reveal the complex, contradictory power of advertising
imagery, leaving open possibilities for change.
Theory from many disciplines struggles to understand how hierarchical dualisms in
the arenas of class, culture, gender, and race function ontologically when contingent
social and psychological constructions nevertheless define and limit embodied human
identity (cf. Borgerson 2001, for a review). These dualisms, although contested and
culturally influenced, have not disappeared (cf. Bourdieu 2001; Butler 1990, 1993;
Connell 2002; Gordon 1995, 2003). Despite gender bending, queering, and androgyny,
gender remains a fundamental social, psychological and cultural category. We
acknowledge that our starting point inhabits Western society in the present moment,
but we draw on theory that contends that these dualisms are pervasive, and tend to
objectify social relations and identity categories such as gender (cf. Miller 1995).
Repeated, or reiterated, versions of gender and race underlie and continually revitalize
what is considered natural, typical and, often, appropriate for specific groups. Stereo-
typed and, perhaps, damaging, representation of iterations derived from essentialist,
often sexist and racist, understandings remain a crucial concern for research into
advertising images.
Michel Foucault’s late writings found him preoccupied with a form of philosophi-
cal concern that he describes as a “critical ontology of ourselves” (1984, 45).
Throughout his genealogical work, Foucault (1977, 1978) argues that we are consti-
tuted as modern subjects through a nexus of several historical power discourses such
as medicine, criminology, education, and psychiatry. One of the more important
features of discourses is their articulation and employment of limits. These limits
enclose the ontological identity of the individual through installing a series of bina-
ries distinguishing self from other, identity from non-identity (i.e., masculinity-
femininity, cultured-primitive, sane-insane, and so forth). As a result, limits restrict
the set of possibilities open to self-formation. The most important implication of
limits is the constitution of the “normal subject.” (Not to be misunderstood as a
universal concept of Platonic sorts.) Foucault argued that within each discursive
formation such as the medical field, the prison, or the psy-sciences unique processes
of normalization govern the production of desired and deviant subjects (Rose 1995,
1997). Instead of one universal “normal” form, several “normalities” co-exist
depending on the discursive field. Common to all fields however, is that the desired
or normal subject fits neatly into the “right” one of the binary categories, for exam-
ple the white middle-class, the straight, and the law-abiding citizen (versus the black,
the homosexual, and deviant citizen), the rational consumer (versus the irrational
consumer), or the soccer mom (versus the welfare mom) (Dumm 1993; Firat,
Sherry, and Venkatesh 1994; Gordon 1995; Zwick and Andrews 1999). Furthermore,
masculinity—in a semiotic sense—lines up with each right category: rational,
normal, law-abiding, and so forth: “masculinity, for example, in a philosophical
tradition that values rationality, is associated with a superior ability to reason, femi-
ninity with a denigrated intuition of emotion” (Bartky 2002, 70). In this way, any
behavior that falls outside the limits of normalized ontologies becomes obscure,
deviant, and almost incomprehensible, with respect to the specific formations of the
self (Gordon 2003).
The notion of limits enlightens representational practices and their capacity to
reflect or produce ontological change. Outside structuralism, more subtle investiga-
tions of power discourses become possible, allowing us to reject overdetermined fixa-
tions of meaning. For example, an analysis of the representational language of
advertising inspired by Althusserian structuralism would be unable to explain any
change in the politics of representation if the social and institutional structures of
advertising production had not equally changed. In other words, as long as the struc-
tural dialectic of class (labor-capital), race (black-white), or gender (female-male)
remain intact, no change can occur because it is exactly this system of classification that
orders what is thought, practiced, and represented (Bourdieu 1992). On the other
hand, any structural change in the relations of advertising production or binary coding
would axiomatically command representational change.
The concept of limits breaks with this kind of determinism and allows for the possi-
bility of complex discursive interactions within institutional and binary codes. Indeed,
taking this approach we can now analyze advertising representations as texts produced
at the intersections of representational conventions, changing definitions of target
markets, and cultural politics of gender among others. It must be noted that we do not
wish to downplay the importance of institutional power structures at work within the
advertising industry to understand meaning production. In fact, in a very real sense the
opposite is true. We take advertising’s masculine hegemony as a given (cf. Hanke
1992). This strategy allows us, rather than concentrate on advertising as information or
marketing strategy, to focus on how other discourses are employed to contest or secure
the production of meanings in advertising. The analytical immanence of our analysis is
supported by the success of Foucault’s powerful genealogies that he described as writ-
ing “a history of the present.” To conduct a visual analysis of contemporary advertising
representation of course means to consider historical antecedents of the modern adver-
tising discourse. In this way, we undertake what we call a visual genealogy—an excava-
tion of representational practices, perceptual processes, and cultural codes that inform
contemporary advertising imagery.
Visual Genealogy and Contemporary Advertising Images

To place contemporary advertising images of masculinity within a historical frame-
work, and to develop conceptual links between disparate forms of representation, we
turn to art history and closely related fields of visual studies and photography. Art critic
John Berger described important parallels between the history of art and advertising,
showing how advertising depends heavily on the techniques, symbols, and history of
paintings (Berger 1972). In general, art is a sign of affluence in Western cultures—it
belongs to the good life. Advertising drew on the language of painting that celebrates
wealth, power, and private property, and art, in turn was influenced by the commercial
world and its graphic techniques and popular subjects (e.g., Drucker 1999). Moreover,
advertising shaped the modern era, with its insistence on visual consumption.
Photography and Portraiture

In the US, advertisers quickly took advantage of print technology to link ads to art,
paintings were used in advertising images for their attractive bright colors and appeal-
ing cultural associations (Marchand 1985). Artistic references also suggest a cultural
authority superior to crass material interests (Berger 1972). Thus, by referring to art,
advertising can simultaneously denote wealth and spirituality, luxury and transcendent
cultural value. In particular, advertising mobilizes formal artistic conventions of
portraiture—pose, symbol, style—as well as techniques borrowed from painting,
photography and film to represent identity (Lears 1994; Pelfrey and Hall-Pelfrey 1993;
Sturken and Cartwright 2001).
Photography emerged as advertising’s primary medium (see Goldman and Papson
1996). Photography, like advertising, has deep ties to fine art: “much of the formal
iconography and symbolic structuring has its roots in painting, but photography
substitutes for the painting’s presence a veracity and immediacy which, in going
beyond questions of aesthetics, involves us in what has been called ‘the entwined prob-
lematic of representation and sexuality’” (Clarke 1997, 123). Graphic design, film, and
fashion also extend their influence on advertising imagery and practice; however, the
largely hidden structure of photographic definition and discourse remains understud-
ied as the dominant information technology of marketing imagery (see Schroeder
2002). Photography subtly occupies the public space of representation, establishing
and maintaining identity in visual representation.
Photographs encompass both a critical part of the advertising world and an
important process of representing identity. Historically, photography allowed many
more people the opportunity to possess an image of themselves. Photographic
portraits, in particular, are perhaps the most straightforward representations of
identity (Tagg 1989). Yet the very artificiality of most portraits—smiling, touched
up, well lit, posed—demonstrates a gap between image and lived experience. Much
of the difficulty in apprehending and interpreting photography lies in the medium’s
surface realism. We must remind ourselves that advertising models in ads are posed,
paid, and pampered—despite their “natural” appearance, advertising images “are
not ‘reality’ but an artfully arranged manipulation of visual elements. Those
elements are, however, arranged precisely to arouse desire, fantasy, and longing, to
make us want to participate in the world they portray” (Bordo 1997, 122). Further-
more, photographic conventions, while often appearing natural and spontaneous,
evolved within the historical context of visual representation: “superficially, at least,
the photograph is directly opposed to the portrait painting, and yet it is extraordi-
nary how the portrait photograph remains encoded within the context of painting—
hence the complexity and contradictions at the heart of any photograph of an indi-
vidual” (Clarke 1997, 103). Advertising portraits build upon these representational
conventions.
Marketers appropriated, transformed, and harnessed photography to create a domi-
nant communication technology. However, advertising images contradict Roland
Barthes’s influential notion that photography shows “what has been” (1981). As
consumers we should know that what is shown in ads has not really been; ads are
usually staged constructions designed to sell something. Yet, largely due to photogra-
phy’s realism, combined with aesthetic and technological expertise, advertising images
produce powerful, persuasive simulations of a real world.
Portrait photography—like figure painting—manifests a larger politics of power and
representation articulated within the social psychological process of the gaze. To gaze
implies more than to look at—it signifies a psychological relationship of power and
sexuality in which the gazer dominates the object of the gaze. For example, film has
been called an instrument of the male gaze, producing limited representations of
women, the good life, and sexual fantasy from a male point of view (Mulvey 1989).
Royalty gaze upon their subjects, viewed as property in the kingdom. Explorers gaze
upon newly “discovered” land as colonial resources (Pratt 1992). Tourists gaze upon
the exotic other, encountered on packaged tours (Urry 2002). Interpersonally, the gaze
“corresponds to desire, the desire for self-completion through another” (Olin 1996,
210). The gaze, then, limits both the gazer and the gazed upon. Patterson and Elliott’s
inverted gaze represents one of the myriad forms that the gaze may take, including a
female gaze (see Clark 2000; Mosse 1996; Sturken and Cartwright 2001).
The Carte de Visite

Social historian Andrea Volpe’s (1999, 2000) work on the role of nineteenth-century
carte de visite (visiting cards) in the formation of an American notion of desired
middle-class bodies offers a concrete example of photography’s complicated interac-
tion with consumption, the gaze and the represented body. Cartes de visite offered a
relatively accessible, portable, and lifelike portrait to the masses, and comprised 95
percent of photographs made during the nineteenth century (Bender 1982). The repre-
sentational and aesthetic shifts that ensued with the success of cartes de visite offer
important insights into the mass production and consumption of photographic
images, and serves as a crucial step in the development and deployment of human
portraits in advertising.
As the first form of photographs printed on paper, cartes could be cheaply multi-
plied. Their small size made them portable and the use of posing stands that held the
posing subject in perfect position for the shot enabled the photographer to produce
cartes de visite in rapid quantities (Volpe 1999). Economically, they were an instant
success, albeit less because of the demand originating from the upper social classes to
have their picture taken, the initial target market for cartes. The real economic impact
was generated by the vivid exchange of cartes de visite in urban and later even rural
places of America. Millions bought and sold photographs showing individuals of
whom they often knew nothing about, not even their names. The cultural implications
of this trucking and trading of cartes de visite cannot be underestimated. The carte de
visite, Volpe argues, created a powerful visual discourse of the body (1999). Because of
the rigid regime of the posing stand, men and women portrayed in the cartes took on
standardized “ideal” body postures during the long exposure times. Consequently, a
socially and culturally respectable type of the body quickly emerged, reproduced and
circulated. The quantities in which cartes de visite were multiplied and discharged into
the marketplace ensured a wide diffusion of these body representations and their ensu-
ing high visibility. In a short time span, a previously “bodiless” middle-class became
embodied. Moreover, the middle-class subject also becomes gendered and raced
through the same representational force.
Suren Lalvani’s study of photography’s role in constructing modernity shows how
nineteenth-century photography, including cartes de visite, functioned to discipline
the body. From studying popular forms of nineteenth-century photography, he
concluded: “in legitimizing specific forms of subject-object relations, technologies of
vision like photography, embedded within particular discursive and cultural forma-
tion, organize specific relations between knowledge, power and the body” (Lalvani
1996, 2). He reminds us that portraiture—like pornography and advertising—exists
for public display even if it is intended for private consumption (Lalvani 1996).
The carte de visite produces ideal representations of the “normal” subject: middle-
class, white, and male or female, respectively. The desirability of these bodies was rein-
forced through their juxtaposition with the spectacular bodies of the “abnormal” other.
Women without arms, blacks with deep complexions and “unrefined” facial traits, and
midgets came to be featured on cartes and were equally successfully commercialized in
the nineteenth-century marketplace as representations of grotesque bodies (Bajac
2002). So, two decades before the printing press acquired the technical ability to repro-
duce photographs in newspapers, cartes de visite had laid the ground for social,
cultural, and ideological categories of the normal body. Their aesthetic and formal
aspects were both deeply rooted in the conventions of fine art and normative for the
future representation of men and women. As such, they can be seen as a key intercessor
between fine art and modern forms of media representation such as advertising, which
relies heavily on pictures of people, constructed as consumers, employees, managers,
or “typical people,” echoing the phenomenal success of cartes de visite as aesthetic
consumer objects, personal possessions, and social signifiers.
Like advertising imagery, cartes de visite offered up images of the known and the
unknown for consumption, circulation and scrutiny, helping usher in the image econ-
omy. They were among the first mass circulated images of identity, exerting a profound
influence on photographic reproduction, codes of appearance, and the visual imagi-
nary (Bajac 2002). Celebrity carte de visite portraits were incredibly popular, helping
pave the way for today’s obsession with celebrities’ images in magazines, websites, tele-
vision, and supporting their lucrative roles as product endorsers. Furthermore, they
impressed upon their large audience an awareness of physical appearance, instilling a
reflexive concern with body, identity, and posterity.
The Male Pin-up

The male pin-up is another form of portrait that informs contemporary male advertis-
ing imagery, one that helped clear the path for recent masculine representational
terrain—the bods, hunks, and heartthrobs of mainstream media. In a classic study of
male representation, Richard Dyer extended Goffman’s gender analysis to the male pin-
up genre—which includes celebrities, actors, athletes, gay icons, and pornography. His
close analysis of pose, posture, and gaze point out important features of contemporary
masculine representation, within an expanding visual repertoire of men’s bodies.
Dyer suggests that images of men that are specifically designed to be looked at,
admired, and worshipped, such as celebrity portraits and male pin-ups, unsettle
patterns of the gendered gaze, producing “a certain instability” (1982). For example, he
found that representations of men as sex objects, or at least celebrities, generally show
men looking off to one side or up, thus not facing the camera lens. He notes that in
social interaction women look at men more, in part as a result of listening and generally
paying attention to them. Women watch men, in other words (Dyer 1982). However,
in crowded situations, men watch women, often gazing at them without social interac-
tion. In male photographic poses, he points out that looking off camera suggests an
interest in something outside the range of the viewer’s vision. Looking up may imply
an interest in something more important than his face or body, an “upward striving”
that resolves some of the contradiction between masculine identity and male object of
desire. Furthermore, male models rarely look at the viewer. When then do, they rarely
smile as women do so invitingly. Looking and the gaze usually implies power, those
with permission (and time) to look are generally more powerful than those looked at.
Looking signals activity, being looked at, passivity.
A standard motif in Western advertising is the “hero” shot—an ad containing an
image of a lone man, conquering some territory, villain, or at least underarm odor. A
single man within an image—without a family, wife, or other heterosexual markers—
also allows for a “gay” reading (e.g., Clark 2000; Kates 1999; Schroeder and Borgerson
2003; Wardlow 1996). This contradiction involves “the apparent address to women’s
sexuality and the actual working out of male sexuality” (Dyer 1982, 66). How do images
of men resolve this issue? How to maintain gendered power relations while represent-
ing men as objects of desire? Dyer contends that images of men “must disavow this
element of passivity if they are to be kept in line with the dominant ideas of masculin-
ity-as-activity” (Dyer 1982, 66). Thus, men are often shown doing something, or with
an identity defined outside that of a pin-up, such as a sports star or businessman
(cf. Schroeder and Borgerson 1998).
Visual Genealogy and the Consumer Context

These “postholes”—portraits, cartes de visite, and pin-ups—provide a historical back-
ground for understanding contemporary male imagery. As visual theorist Anthea
Callen argues, “visual images are, then, potent mediators of the lived experience of the
body, our own and others, giving us ways of conceptualising and describing the bodily”
(Callen 2002, 603). These three genres cannot exhaust the genealogical influences upon
contemporary advertising images; rather, we point to the rich historical backdrop that
informs current consumption and production. Furthermore, we are not implying that
all consumers consciously acknowledge how these genres may inspire current ad
campaigns, or even that art directors and photographers actively appropriate prior
representational forms. We suggest that these forms circulate through culture, exerting
both direct and indirect influence on the production and consumption of imagery.
Direct, via training, as many ad producers study the history of visual representation;
indirect, via the iteration of images over time, space, and generations within fashion,
retro, and camp cycles. Pierre Bourdieu argued that fine art traditionally provided a
taste-making vehicle par excellence. We suggest that advertising performs much the
same function today, contributing to its status as cultural discourse (see also Marchand
1985). In the next section, we discuss how contemporary imagery struggles with emerg-
ing conflicts over representational form, masculine identity, and desire.
Contemporary Contradictions in Representing Masculinity

Many researchers have suggested that recent advertising images have reflected—or
anticipated—transformations in ideals of masculinity (e.g., Elliott, Eccles, and Hodgson
1993; Mort 1996; Stern 2003). As gender theorist Robert Connell puts it, men “face
structurally-induced conflicts about masculinity—conflicts about their sexuality and
their social presences as men, about the meaning of their choice of sexual object, and
in their construction of relationships with women and heterosexual men” (Connell
1992, 737). We join this focus on masculine identity, and ask questions about how it is
constituted and what forms it takes. What do contemporary visual representations say
about masculinity? How does transformation within ads express contradictions and
conflicts about male identity? How might they reflect tensions between self and other,
desire and desiring, modernity and postmodernity? How does (the fear of) homosexu-
ality influence advertising representation?
Surely, gender identity “is a pervasive filter through which individuals experience
their social world, consumption activities are fundamentally gendered” (Bristor and
Fischer 1993, 519). Products are designed for girls or boys from the first breath, and
gender segmentation is understood by consumers as young as two and three (Pennell
1994). Yet, consumer desire is regularly assigned agency—an active choice toward
gendered goods. According to one popular consumer behavior textbook, lifestyle
marketing “recognizes that people sort themselves into groups on the basis of the
things they like to do, how they like to spend their leisure time, and how they choose
to spend their disposable income” (Solomon 1999, 147). How one sorts oneself into
masculine or feminine—one of the basic identity groups—poses an intriguing ques-
tion; most consumers do not “choose” their gender identity in the same way as they
join an online chat forum, sports fan club, or professional association (see, of course,
Butler 1990, and especially 1993). Thus, consumer choices about clothing, hairstyle,
piercings and sexual products all contribute to the construction of sexuality, lifestyle
and identity (Schroeder 1998a). Masculinity represents one such distinct lifestyle, asso-
ciated with, and continuously constructed by, consumer behaviors such aggressive
driving, shaving, gift-giving, or investing (see Sturrock and Pioch 1998).
We consume gender identity with our eyes, bodies, and minds (see Willis 1991).
Men, in particular, are socialized (at least in the West) to rely on the visual sense for
arousal. Sight remains the most distancing of the senses, “in which the subject stands
separate from the object, which is other, there” (Young 1990, 182). This is the power of
the gaze. Controlled by its discursive limits, the gaze orders sexual possibilities thereby
constituting gendered identities: male-female, subject-object, desiring-desired, sexu-
ally dominating-sexually dominated. The world of advertising largely reinforces these
limits chiefly through its well documented, yet enduring, sexist representation of
women, but also via limiting images of men (e.g., Barthel 1988; Bordo 1993; Brod 1996;
Goffman 1979; Schroeder 1998b; Stern 1993; Williamson 1986).
The gaze usually turns toward female bodies. Images of women permeate society;
part of being male apparently involves consuming female images, in a pedagogic ritual
of consumer culture that generally reaffirms the heterosexual imperative in which
attractive, readily available women serve as sexual, zestful objects of desire. In short,
within conventional advertising representations the male embodies the active subject,
the business-like, self-assured decision maker, while the female occupies the passive
object, the observed sexual/sensual body, eroticized and inactive. However, some
recent commercial images seem to disrupt the dominant gaze suggesting shifting limits
of the advertising discourse.
Several cultural contradictions occupy current representations of masculinity in
contemporary advertising. First, within the feminized consumption realm, how might
men be represented as consumers, without diminishing their power? Second, how
might the male body function to represent consumer goals, such as success, attractive-
ness, or the good life? Third, in what way can male desire be shown, without collapsing
into typical projections of the female body?
In the next section, we assess three contemporary advertising exemplars that articu-
late this set of contradictions, providing illustrative examples for reflecting on mascu-
linity, ontology, and desire. The ads were drawn from popular magazines, and feature
mainstream products, alcohol and automobiles—two of the biggest players in the
advertising industry. These examples were assembled specifically to illuminate the arti-
cle’s themes, as well as for their compositional connections, which we discuss below.
We found them useful images to develop our ideas about advertising representations
of identity. We do not claim that they are representative, rather we argue that they are
meaningful, compelling images worthy of close analysis. In this way, we follow inter-
pretive work that focuses on a limited range of materials in order to make broader
points about representation and identity in visual materials (e.g., Gombrich 1999).
Marketing the Man

Coloma Licor de Cafe
“She was impressed that he ordered their Mudslides with Coloma. Which did wonders
for his self-confidence” states a recent print ad for Coloma “100% Colombian Licor de
Cafe.” This ad features a black and white photograph of a white man and woman at a
bar or restaurant table with a superimposed color photograph of a Coloma bottle next
to a lowball glass that presumably contains a Mudslide (1/2 oz. Coloma, 1/2 oz. Irish
Cream, 1/2 oz. Vodka, 1 oz. cream). The color inset floats on a red circle, circumscribed
by a yellow line. The product name, spelled out in brown writing, represents the
brand’s two Os with stylized coffee beans. Coloma, “the smoother way to stir things
up” reads the copy’s double entendre, an oblique innuendo for its purported ability to
“smoothly” stimulate desired interactions, “stirring things up” apparently standing in
for alcoholically propelling people together.
The action takes place in an oval, gilt-framed mirror hanging to the left of the couple.
Coloma Licor de Cafe advertisement.
The bespectacled man gazes at his reflection, which has curiously transformed him into
a much more classically attractive visage. In the mirror’s reflection, the man appears to
be in his mid to late twenties, tall, dark, a rakish curl of hair falling seductively down
his forehead. He wears a dark jacket over a bright white dress shirt, unbuttoned at the
neck to reveal a neat, white T-shirt. He sports a carefully pressed and folded white
handkerchief in his left breast pocket. He has lost “his” eyeglasses, pointed nose, unstyl-
ish hair, and oversize chin—he might be said to resemble Pierce Brosnan as James
Bond. The woman—not caught in the reflection that we see—seems to be peering
Figure 1 Coloma Licor de Cafe advertisement.
across her companion to look at his rugged reflection. She models a low cut cocktail
dress, which reveals a thin frame, a conservative, shoulder-length haircut, and makeup
that exaggerates her facial expression—one of bemusement. She seems secure in her
effect on her companion. She appears to be enjoying herself—her right arm reaches
over and grasps the man’s right arm. A lit votive candle and a small vase with a roman-
tic rose grace their table. Her drink sits in front of her, untouched. His right hand curls
around his Coloma Mudslide, maintaining its fetish-like powers of transformation.
We suggest that the ad represents a portrait of a male-female couple with the addi-
tion of another male peering in on them from behind the mirror. This mirrored image
may be read in several ways, as the sage from whom the man learned the ways of order-
ing impressive drinks, or the self transformed by demonstrating taste. To order and
consume the right product (even the choice of the restaurant) expresses the man’s
cultural capital in the field of middle-class consumer culture. Thus, the ornamental
femininity of his date further enhances his capital accumulation, and her apparent
pleasure at his beverage brand reaffirms his masculinity, attractiveness and taste in one
go. Perhaps more attractive mirror-man admires less attractive man’s drinking partner,
thus conferring male status on his ability to attract a desirable date? The alchemical
mirror embodies contradictions of the consuming male; one must be vain and attrac-
tive, as well as rational and sophisticated.
Furthermore, the tropes of alcohol involve taste, the pleasures of imbibing, the abil-
ity to “control one’s liquor,” and, at a more fundamental level, a ritual of adulthood,
especially the male variety. In Bourdieu’s theory, the conversion of one form of capital
into another is precisely what makes it so valuable to vie for various forms of capital in
different social fields. Here, we see the conversion of cultural capital into social capital
by virtue of acquiring more desirable “body-for-others” (Bourdieu 1984, 207). Either
way, we have a provocative message of physicality and product use.
The “homely” man seems caught, Narcissus-like, gazing at his more handsome
reflection, looking away from his date. Mirrors are a traditional trope of vanity, narcis-
sism, lust, and pride in Western art. Usually, mirrors are linked to women, revealing,
reflecting, and reinforcing feminine attributes of beauty and vanity. In this ad, the
mirror plays a double role—casting a reflection of the newly self-confident man, and
echoing the female role of mirroring male identity. Thus, the feminine mirrors the
masculine, reflecting back self-confidence, consumer expertise, and embodied trans-
formation. Furthermore, the woman stands in as a mirror. He looks to her to gain a
flattering conception of himself—she was impressed which did wonders for his self-confi-
dence. This process is reminiscent of Charles Horton Cooley’s concept of the looking
glass self, whereby we construct our identity by how others reflect back to us (Cooley
1902). The male gaze turns toward the female as well as the mirror to reassure himself
of his competence, attractiveness, and confidence. She touches him, reminding him of
her presence, her mirror-like qualities, but she is otherwise unengaged with him. His
reflection represents his narcissism, as well as his insecurity.
This ad stands out for its representation of the male gaze, and suggests a reordering
of limits within the male discourse. The image appears to invert, or perhaps expand,
the object of gaze; the man seems quite concerned with himself as an object of beauty,
as he vainly pays more attention to his image than to his date. But unlike the genuinely
self-confident beau of conventional gender displays, the man in the ad is not handsome
and doubts his effect on the woman. He must labor to impress her. Of course, Coloma,
via the association from product to person, comes to his rescue; it allows him to display
refined taste and transforms him into the more “typical” man. His self-doubts fade—
thanks to the woman’s positive impression—his masculinity reaffirmed. However, one
might read this ad in other ways, as men to men, perhaps the striking man in the mirror
attracts the gaze of the homely man, doubly disrupting the gaze, and transforming the
ad into a potentially gay image (see Kates 1999; Stern and Schroeder 1994). This queer
perspective finds homoerotic overtones in the gaze between the two men—one reflect-
ing, one reflected—who wink at themselves while wooing others.
Lexus LS 400 advertisement.
Lexus LS 400
“Introducing a Lexus for Those Who’ve Never Seen Themselves in a Lexus” states a
recent ad for Lexus automobiles. In the center of the ad, a man stands with his back to
the viewer, facing what looks like a large indoor billboard advertisement for Lexus. His
right arm hangs down at his side, his left firmly placed on his hip. His well-toned
physique exhibits a desired, vigorous “V” shape that signals a regular regimen of body
care and concern. He wears black pants and shoes, his slicked back hair shimmers with
a silvery, sensuous gleam. Oh, and he is naked from the waist up. Our hero appears to
be in a subway station, waiting for the next train. A payphone hugs the ad’s darker far
right edge. On a bench at the left, his briefcase and copy of the Wall Street Journal rests,
placing him firmly within the managerial milieu, and symbolically providing him with
an identity outside his potential pin-up pose.
The ad image within the image shows a Lexus LS 400 moving swiftly from right to
left, its rear end blurred by speed. Curiously, we can see the car through the man’s
back—his transparent and ethereal body provides a vehicular vision. The iconic “trans-
porter” technology from Star Trek comes to mind—his body looks as if it were fading
into the billboard photograph of the car. (A turn to art history reveals ancestors of this
technique, especially in landscape painting.) The billboard’s metallic silver frame
circles the man’s waist, resembling a high-tech belt. This line binds him into the frame
of the photograph, as if including him within the frame, wrapping around his wrists, as
well. He is thus dressed by the image, joined to it—apparently caught by an ad in the
subway, one of many he encounters in an average day. This ad, however, seems to liter-
ally draw him in, binding his body to the image. His back projects into the ad, merging
with it, serving as a window and a screen for the viewer. The product projects onto him,
and he seems to be absorbing the message bodily. His body has become the ad’s
medium, representing the product by incorporating it bodily, a spectacular instantia-
tion of the consuming body.
This ad plays upon a number of visual conventions. The man clearly gazes at an
image. The scene resembles a museum-goer gazing at a famous painting, reminiscent
of surrealist Rene Magritte’s famous series of images Man in the Bowler Hat that depict
a man with his back to the viewer. One way to read the image suggests that he now—
literally—“sees himself in a Lexus.” Lexus here represents a trope of managerial mascu-
linity, a success symbol that powers him out of his current predicament. His surround-
ings are human-made, the often inhospitable public realm of mass transportation. In a
Figure 2 Lexus LS 400 advertisement.
Rousseauian sense, his partially nude form might signal a desire to return to a more
natural state, a state of being he could be in if he were not burdened by culture. Ironi-
cally, the car represents the escape from culture—from reliance on mass transit, from
business clothing, from alienation. Instead, man’s natural state heeds his desire for
independence, individuality, control over one’s own life, and sexual prowess. The copy
reads “When was the last time you felt this connected to a car?” Thus, the man in the
ad connects to the car, physically, visually, psychologically, suggesting the naturalistic
fusion of two bodies in sexual rapture. Indeed, the car has become part of him, the
wheel hovering near his heart, the engine near his head, in a high-tech escape from the
iron cage of modernity.
In this ad, some limits of conventional advertising discourse are shifted. The man in
the ad, while remarkably virile (see his muscular body and assertive stance), loses his
sober distance, his objectivity. He surrenders emotionally and physically to the visual
experience. The car, now becomes part of the man, his self-extension (Belk 1988), or
perhaps vice versa; being in a Lexus an important part of his reverie. The ad challenges
the “natural” view of man as controlled, self-sufficient, and rational subject. Rather, the
ad expresses a synthetic male personality assembled out of the flotsam and jetsam of
contemporary commodities (Mort 1996).
Moreover, the ad shifts limits of traditional discourse in that it focuses on the
aesthetics of the male body. With his back to us, he displays his well-built, nude torso,
a stylish hairstyle, and close-fitting, tailored pants. His shirtless appearance marks an
anomaly. Although female bodies are constantly displayed in this manner in advertise-
ments, a male body thus depicted remains rather unusual, at least until recently. Recall,
though, his managerial identity, signified by briefcase, Wall Street Journal, as well as his
Lexus fascination provides him with “cover,” he is not merely a model. Clearly, we can
make visceral and sensual connections between his and the car’s body—power, perfor-
mance, exceptional “road-feel” but also elegance, softness (colors), and taste. His body,
as the conduit of the product’s image and the ad’s message, constitutes a hybrid, caught
in between the masculine and feminine, battling domestic containment that the
subway represents, longing for the Lexus escape.
Oldsmobile Aurora advertisement.
Oldsmobile Aurora
“Defy Convention: Allure” shows an Oldsmobile Aurora automobile parked in front of
an elegant corner antique store. Atop the curved building sits a billboard, lit from
below, advertising “d2 couture: Milan, NYC, Paris” on which a man and a woman
embrace each other. The man’s closed eyes signal his enjoyment. However, the woman
looks away—out of the ad frame—toward the Aurora parked on the street below the
billboard. The man, intent on kissing her neck, seems not to notice the “outside” scene
distracting her. She wears an elegant dress or gown. His clothes are less remarkable—
indeed his body seems to shrink from view. Her hand animates the image, placed care-
fully, yet forcefully, on his shoulder, almost as if she is starting to push away. The bill-
board “ad” within the ad oozes high fashion and status, reinforcing the general look of
the pictured location as an upscale shopping district—where an Aurora owner would
feel at home.
The headline—Allure—signals perhaps the woman’s appeal, but more significantly,
the advertised car’s qualities: “aerodynamic steel skin, carved haunches, and a sculpted
tail.” Clearly, the ad references bodily qualities, as well as to the cultural qualities
Figure 3 Oldsmobile Aurora advertisement.
embodied in the shop’s antiques, the street’s quaint architecture, and the new car’s
shiny surface. “Allure” rarely describes men. However, it seems that by catching the
woman’s eye the car embodies desirable male traits, allowing it to compete with her
kissing partner.
The man’s presence in the billboard serves to inscribe the ad’s gendered relation-
ships. In an apparent defiance of convention, the woman seems more attracted to a car
than a man. The automobile, an epitome of commodity fetishism, transforms the
women’s possibility for social relations as the commodity stands in for a man.
However, read in another way, the image disrupts the assumption of heterosexuality
present in most mainstream ads. The woman turns away from the male toward the
product, shifting the gaze within the ad, rejecting the man in favor of the machine.
From a male point of view, it seems we now must compete with consumer goods for
attention, facing the novel prospect of being replaced by a newer, more stylish (prod-
uct) model. The Olds enjoys more appeal, or at least attention, than her date, subtly
reinforcing the gendered notion that women, not men, choose mates. Consumer
culture has empowered females to make choices, become active agents (albeit limited
by the market), and even question entrenched notions of heterosexuality. The woman
in the ad challenges convention by rejecting the embodied male. Viewed this way,
Aurora truly isn’t “your father’s Oldsmobile.”
The Olds Aurora represents a newer, better model—one to trade up for. Tradi-
tionally cars have inhabited the female realm as objects of male desire. Furthermore,
automobiles have been associated with females via the use of advertising models, car
show models and media. Perhaps now a car is implicitly read as female, eschewing
the need for an actual female model, making the car more malleable as an iconic
statement of identity. Thus, this ad shows its interpretive flexibility: aimed to men
the message reads “she’ll be attracted to you in your Olds;” aimed to women, “your
allure allows you trade up for a better model.” Frankly, we find these messages rather
confused, and wryly note that General Motors recently discontinued the Oldsmobile
brand.
As women are seen as an expanding target market for expensive consumer goods like
automobiles, products will be given different qualities within the gendered world of
mainstream products. To create women as serious consumers, they must be repre-
sented in typical male roles: decisive, financially and emotionally independent, egotis-
tical. Indeed, in no subtle terms, the ad encourages the woman to commit the original
sin. Like Eve, the woman’s devotion leaves the confines of her world within the bill-
board (which presumably should be focused on the man) and tested against the seduc-
tiveness of the material object. Confidently, she ignores the man and “reaches” for the
car. The (al)lure of the product has usurped the male, thereby hailing new possibility
for women’s moral freedom and economic power.
Complex and traditionally technological products, automobiles have long been
given human-like traits and design features—body, nose, headlights like eyes and so
forth (Berger 1998). Rather than ascribe male qualities to the car, the copywriter fell
back to animal qualities as a proxy, thus opening up possible reading outside the realm
of heterosexuality. In this ad, however, these qualities loom as threats to men’s relation-
ships with women. We have created an adversary, it seems, that magically awakens a
photographed woman with its bodily allure. To be sure, the ad does not go so far as to
proclaim the end of the masculine-feminine divide. But for the modern woman, the ad
suggests, masculinity is a floating concept with sliding meanings: she finds it in men as
well as objects, such as automobiles. But maybe she is not much interested in mascu-
linity at all.
Another way to frame this image is via the notion of “window dressing;” the subtle
placing of gay “signs” within an otherwise heterosexual tableau. Thus, the woman’s
rejection of the man for the car—a feminized object—may be read by those so inclined
as a rejection of heterosexuality, and a turn toward a lesbian relationship or at least
encounter. In the two other ads, as well, window dressing possibilities abound: the lone
Lexus man resembles a pin-up, a gay ideal, a shirtless hunk; and as discussed, the
Coloma men may well exchange queer looks. Each image contains crossover potential,
pointing out the flexibility inherent in marketspace bodily representations.
Shifting Gaze—Shifting Limits

These three ads are not meant to be a representative sample. We chose them instead for
their interesting manner of representing male bodies—as illustrative exemplars of
shifting images of men and the gaze in contemporary ads, and their visual deployment
of transitional tropes such as the mirror, the portrait, and the figure. Taken together,
we believe they show the male body as subject of the gaze—not necessarily a female
gaze—participating in the world of product advertising as well as a shift in the hetero-
sexist gendered consumption of the gaze itself. Furthermore, these unrelated ads refer
to the consuming gaze of advertising images. The Coloma and Lexus ads focus on the
body represented by male bodies. The Aurora ad, we argue, projects embodiment onto
an automobile, and shifts the gaze away from the heterosexual male. This machine
represents an interesting hybrid, perhaps the logical articulation of advertising strategy
that links human qualities with products. In a remarkable way, the car has the power
to animate a still life in a surreal transformation from image to being.
These ads each feature an image within the image—a mirror, a subway ad, and a
billboard that represents the body, reflecting the (promised) transformational power
of products. Each expresses a formal condition of representation that visual theorist
Nicholas Mirzoeff calls intervisuality: “the simultaneous display and interaction of a
variety of modes of visuality” (2002, 3). Each assumes a way of representing the
consumer gaze, and activating psychological processes of identification, looking, and
desire, much as paintings of paintings, mirrors and the figure serve allegorical
purposes in Western Art. As attributes of truth, mirrors do not lie. Mirrors also have
iconographic connections to sight, pride, vanity, and lust—a potent package of signi-
fying potential (Hall 1979). For example, mirrors serve as symbols of isolation and
visibility, recall the Narcissus myth that trapped him forever within a mirror’s gaze.
Thus, the mirror (as well as the ads as mirrors) isolates consumer’s attention upon
their own body within the marketing framework, making identity visible, trapping
them within longings for immortality and transformation. In the Coloma ad, the male
body is transformed via ordering an impressive product. Thus, product use can make
up for physical “deficiency.” The Lexus also physically transforms the male model. He
is rendered ethereally transparent, signaling his escape from the scene as well as his
connection with the automobile. In the Aurora ad, the product assumes bodily form;
human qualities are projected onto the Oldsmobile, which attract a woman nearby.
The Aurora-body exudes allure, a quality embodied in its design and carefully culti-
vated for its brand image.
Each ad can also be read as gay. We are not suggesting that these mainstream
producers are embracing the gay market, nor were these images found in media
directed at gay consumers. Rather, they seem to take energy and inspiration from gay
iconography, perhaps as a way to unsettle ad conventions. Or, in an attempt to portray
men as attractive consumers, gayness seeps in, an occupational hazard when utilizing
attractive male models. We note that homosexuality is not built on a lack of masculin-
ity, rather it is intertwined with hegemonic masculinity (Connell 1992). Consumption
offers a solution, a way to navigate the boundaries between homosexual identity and
heterosexual culture, or perhaps a way to express homosexual longings without engag-
ing in homosexual relations. Thus, consumption, or at least representation of
consumption, shifts hegemonic masculinity from the realm of aggression, bodily force,
competition, and physical skill to the domain of consumption, including taste, discern-
ment, expertise, and bodily appearance (see also Miller 1998; Stern and Schroeder
1994). We see ads as transformative guides or “a journey between milieux” (Connell
1992, 748).
It seems reasonable that queering these images opens up further possibilities for
male identity, albeit still circumscribed by mainstream notions of masculinity and
male desire (cf. Kates 1999). Thus, the male may gain an awareness of his own body
as a site of desire, as indicated by Patterson and Elliott (2002). Judith Butler
suggests that “desire is intentional in that it is always desire of or for a given object
or Other, but it is also reflexive in the sense that desire is a modality in which the
subject is both discovered and enhanced” (Butler 1999, 25, emphasis in original).
Thus desire brings about the relationship between image and viewer, between prod-
uct and consumer, between object of desire and the desiring subject: “in effect, we
read our negativity in the objects and others we desire; as desirable, detestable,
solicitous, or rejecting, these emotional facts of the world mirror our ontological
insufficiency in Hegelian terms; they show us the negativity that we are, and engage
us with the promise of plentitude or the threat of reaffirming our nothingness”
(Butler 1999, 9–10). Via consumption, or the promise of plentitude, consuming
subjects exercise ontological dilemmas.
Advertising discourse is shifting its limits. Perhaps not a fundamental challenge to
conventional male ontologies, but new possibilities are opening up. The Coloma ad
subtly suggests that good looks and good taste (and not the conventional money and
power nexus) are now also part of male attractiveness; a new standard from which men
had hitherto been relatively exempt. The Lexus ad creates a hybrid, synthetic male, who
submits helplessly to the attraction of desire and fantasy. Far from being “in control”
and “rational,” he shows emotions freely. Finally, the Aurora ad, man is pitched against
(and possibly ditched for) a car, his identity commodified as commodity fetishism
takes over, his body dispensed of as the car displaces him.
So, although limits extend, and the gaze expands, gender relations remain opposi-
tional. Male representations have changed in the last few decades, but male dominance
remains. In a sweeping study of Playboy magazine and its affect on male gender roles,
one writer concluded: “masculine identity and visual codes premised upon youthful
hedonism and conspicuous consumerism certainly ruptured and displaced the tradi-
tional codes of a bourgeois masculinity rooted in ideals of hard work, thrift and puri-
tanical conservatism. But, at the same time, they left wider power structures and
systems of inequality essentially intact” (Osgerby 2001, 203–04). However, we argue
that to the degree that the advertising discourse animates visual consumption processes
(Schroeder 2002), a change of its discursive limits disrupts traditional conventions of
the male gaze and opens new possibilities for male identities.
Conclusion
To interpret advertising images is to acknowledge their representational power both
as cultural artifacts and as bearers of meaning, reflecting broad societal, cultural, and
ideological codes. We need to keep in mind that photographs—particularly advertis-
ing photographs—are not mere pictures, accurately representing some external
world: “the photograph both mirrors and creates a discourse with the world, and is
never, despite its often passive way with things, a neutral representation” (Clarke
1997, 27–28). Our interpretations are meant to suggest possibilities, both in terms of
what we take as intended messages as well as resistant meanings. Images, saturated by
a long cultural history, constitute an engaging and deceptive culturally and histori-
cally bound visual language system. Advertising imagery—as a subset within this
system—interacts with it, borrowing from and influencing the larger world of visual
culture.
Constructing a visual genealogy of contemporary images helps illuminate how
advertising works as the face of capitalism, harnessing the global flow of images, fueling
the image economy. This work balances between brand strategy—what the marketer
intends—and brand community—the free appropriation of meaning by the market.
We point to the cultural, historical and representational conventions that limit both
encoding and decoding interpretation processes. Greater awareness of the associations
between the traditions and conventions of art history and the production and
consumption of advertising images may lead to a better understanding of how these
representations constitute a discursive space within which a meaningful sense of the
male body can be maintained. As a result, we can articulate limits within advertising
practice, and evaluate claims about limit transgression. We argue that three important
antecedents of contemporary body images—portraits, cartes de visite, and pin-up
genres—play prominent roles in the production and consumption of identity, and
limit the creative potential of advertising representation.
These ads share a conception of masculinity linked to consumer lifestyles. The
images may reassure men by placing them in masculine situations—on a date with
an attentive admirer, working at a managerial job, or kissing an attractive women—
while subtly reminding them that this masculinity is tenuous, momentary, in need
of constant stoking by consumer choice. Men have long been encouraged by adver-
tising representations to take charge as consumers to construct flawless masculine
identities. After all, consumer culture “depends on the continual creation and prolif-
eration of ‘defect,’ that is always making us feel bad about ourselves at the same time
it pumps us up with excitement over our own ‘agency:’ take charge, ‘Just Do It!’
etc.” (Bordo 1997, 21). What is new about the advertising discourse are the
expanded limits: aesthetics, emotion, and in the case of Aurora, displacement. Via
advertising representation, the male body is being transformed into a visual object,
and, as such, circulates in the same representational system as other visual objects,
such as billboards, ads, and consumer goods. Thus, taken together, these images
show how men can be represented as consumers, how the male body functions to
represent consumer goals and in what ways ads articulate (masculine) desire via the
male body.
The mirror remains a root metaphor of the consumer society, reflecting surface
appearance, beckoning us to look, to compare, and to dream, and exposing us as
exhibited objects for visual consumption. Like a fetish, mirrors express social psycho-
logical tensions, of appearance versus truth, for example, yet catch the viewer within a
circuit of representation, vanity, and consumption (see Schroeder and Borgerson
2003). Moreover, these ad’s use of advertising billboards—images within images—
implicates them within a kind of funhouse mirror, endlessly reflecting consumer
visions, perpetually displacing resolution, and continuously referring back on them-
selves in a parable of the consumption spectacle. In this way, the act of looking—
looking at products, others, oneself, ads, and images—reconfigures the subject of
consumption.
When ads link male bodies with consumer goods they call upon a representational
system that serves as a stabilizing, yet culturally and historically bounded “object-code”
(McCracken 1988). Contemporary magazines seem to outsource heterosexual reassur-
ance to the advertising and fashion images that play central roles in defining the publi-
cation’s look, target market, and overall feel. We acknowledge that consumers are
active agents in this process of meaning creation. However, structural elements such as
sexual dualism in advertising and historical patterns of representation remain powerful
influences. This interaction may have caused the advertising discourse to subtly shift its
representation of the male body.
One contribution consists in extending previous work on male representation into
historical, ontological, and art historical realms, providing a necessary bridge between
advertising meaning residing within managerial strategy or wholly subsumed by
consumer response. This analysis is centered around heterosexual Anglo-American
culture. More work is required to situate this reading for other cultures, particularly in
light of the rise of global capitalism, which “makes it imperative for us to examine how
notions of body aesthetics are transported cross-culturally” (Joy and Venkatesh 1994,
334). However, the images under consideration speak, we believe, to the global affluent
consumer who is not so much marked by spatial location as by socio-cultural capital
(King 1990). We call for further research that situates advertising and identity within
the historical flow of images.
Our specific readings of the ads might give the impression of a dogmatic viewpoint.
This should be addressed. Our interpretations are subjective, suggestive and informed
by our quasi-archeological approach; many other routes are possible. A feminist read-
ing might point to the ads’ potentially transgressive gender messages or, equally, to
their obstinate perpetuation of traditional gender roles; a Marxist interpretation would
perhaps make reference to the alienation we feel in the face of seductive commodity
aesthetics; a managerial study could isolate cognitive responses in an effort to chart the
images’ “effectiveness.” We believe each of these positions have important claims to
make and should be equally pursued. However, we disagree that because different read-
ers have different interpretations, this logically means that images float in a sea of
uncertainty. Rather, we point to the historical, ontological and visual influences
discussed here as critical components of meaning formation, in particular the cultural
constructions of gender that evade individual notions of agency, gender-blending, or
gender dualism’s collapse.
Gender remains central to the world of advertising and consumption—it is difficult
to conceive of most products without male and female target markets. Clearly, “we do
not yet live in a post-gender age” (Bordo 1997, 150). Furthermore, marketing—posi-
tioning, segmenting, targeting—technologically co-opts, creates and maintains differ-
ences in consumer lifestyle, thereby actively reproducing the status quo; gender is no
exception.
A central unresolved issue concerns how visual conventions affect perceptions.
These ads are spectacular combinations of old and new representational systems, or
what has been called “complicated contemporaneity” (Polan 1986). Understanding
and acknowledging the visual past of advertising outlines one path to greater
understanding about advertising as a representational and communicative system.
However, the ontological status of advertising is not yet codified within the various
discourses that it interacts with, such as art, photography, and the mass media. We
believe that our genealogical approach contributes necessary context to the reading of
advertisements.
The interactions of identity, consumption, and representation represent one of the
critical imperatives of contemporary consumer culture. As global markets develop,
built with global advertising campaigns, representations of identity promote a vast
array of products to a burgeoning range of consumers. Cultural conceptions of gender
identity, sexual fulfillment, and their part in the promised good life of consumer choice
will come under intense pressure. Understanding the role that masculinity—and femi-
ninity—plays in consumption, visual history, and representation signals a step toward
understanding how the market structures and subsumes basic ontological concerns of
being, desire, and identity.
Acknowledgements
An early version of the paper was presented at the 1999 Association for Consumer
Research Conference. Thanks to Janet Borgerson, Torsten Ringberg, Ozlem Sandikci
and Árni Sverisson for comments on this project, and also to the anonymous reviewers
for their excellent, constructive suggestions. The first author gratefully acknowledges
support from the Jan Wallanders and Tom Hedelius Foundation.
Note
[1] We employ the term masculinity as “a more or less symmetrical pendant to the concept of
femininity developed within feminist theory. In other words, masculinity is, like femininity, a
concept that bears only an adventitious relation to biological sex and whose various manifes-
tations collectively constitute the cultural, social, and psychosexual expression of gender”
(Solomon-Godeau 1995, 71).
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Consumption, Markets and Culture

Vol. 7, No. 1, March 2004, pp. 21–52

Mirrors of Masculinity: Representation

Keywords: Advertising; Imagery; Identity; Representation; Gender; Masculinity

Advertising, Consumption and Representation

Masculinity and Representational Practices

Visual Genealogy and Contemporary Advertising Images

Photography and Portraiture

The Carte de Visite

The Male Pin-up

Visual Genealogy and the Consumer Context

Contemporary Contradictions in Representing Masculinity

Marketing the Man

Figure 1 Coloma Licor de Cafe advertisement.

Figure 2 Lexus LS 400 advertisement.

Figure 3 Oldsmobile Aurora advertisement.

Shifting Gaze—Shifting Limits

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