Triangulation and referencing task sheet
Key parts from researched books
Consumer psychology in behavioural perspective (Gordan
foxall, 1990)
What are called
the causes of human behavior turn out to be the grounds or reasons for which a
person initiates an action. Human beings, unlike purely physical process, are
telic; that is they pursue ends and purposes, and can and do conceive of the
notion of adapting a means to an end.
Consumer
culture, Identity and Well being: The search for the good life and the body
perfect. (Helga Dittmar)
You only need to
look at, and listen to, people around you, particularly children and
adolescents, to appreciate that consumer culture has a powerful psychological
impact. Celebrities, fashion models, media stars, even computer game heroes and
toys, influence who they aspire to be and what they want to look like.
Having the “right”
things has become vital, not so much because of the material goods themselves
but because of hoped for psychological benefits: popularity, identity,
happiness.
Leisure activities
increasingly involve consuming, and shopping itself has become a leisure and
lifestyle activity. Indeed, arguably, shopping malls have become centres of
both socialising and socialisation. At a deeper level, consumer goods have come
to play a stronger psychological role for us; we value and buy them as means of
regulating emotions and gaining social status, and as ways of acquiring or
expressing identity and aspiring to an “ideal self”.
This Boy Can: Brands , gender and the new masculinity (Suzy Bashford, 2016)
“We’re seeing a huge rise in eating
and body image disorders among young men. We can’t isolate the cause.
Advertising plays its part. A 13-year-old boy of average build in one class
recently told me seeing an ad made him feel fat. He didn’t mean a bit out of
shape. He meant everything that goes with that feeling such as seeing himself
as lazy, unaccomplished and incapable.”
Module Resources
David Gauntlet - Media, gender and identity (Representations of gender today, page 83)
In advertising today, the representation of women and men isn't usually very conspicuously sexist. Sometimes it is, but then we sit up and comment. In the first edition of this book, in 2002, I noted that 'there are also a smallish number of cases where advertisers seem to have decided that it is OK to show women as housewives after all; and even in the twenty-first century, rather amazingly, the UK supermarket chain Iceland was still using the slogan 'That's why mum's go to Iceland"'. Even more incredibly, in 2007 they were still using it. Where the modern dad buys his groceries remain unclear. So, some advertising is unapologetically sexist, and is presumably used because it is felt that the message 'works' for the target audience, even if it might surprise and offend some others. The fact that this doesn't happen all the time does not necessarily show that advertisers take their social responsibilities very seriously, but probably does show that they have learned that it is not good business to offend their customers with sexist stereotypes.
Module Resources
David Gauntlet - Media, gender and identity (Representations of gender today, page 83)
In advertising today, the representation of women and men isn't usually very conspicuously sexist. Sometimes it is, but then we sit up and comment. In the first edition of this book, in 2002, I noted that 'there are also a smallish number of cases where advertisers seem to have decided that it is OK to show women as housewives after all; and even in the twenty-first century, rather amazingly, the UK supermarket chain Iceland was still using the slogan 'That's why mum's go to Iceland"'. Even more incredibly, in 2007 they were still using it. Where the modern dad buys his groceries remain unclear. So, some advertising is unapologetically sexist, and is presumably used because it is felt that the message 'works' for the target audience, even if it might surprise and offend some others. The fact that this doesn't happen all the time does not necessarily show that advertisers take their social responsibilities very seriously, but probably does show that they have learned that it is not good business to offend their customers with sexist stereotypes.
| Author | David Gauntlett |
| Year published: | 2002 |
| Book title: | Media, gender, and identity |
| City: | London |
| Publisher: | Routledge |
David Gauntlett - Selling beauty chapter
sometimes it is unclear why gendered messages in advertising are singled out for particular attention by researchers - there are more publications on women in advertising than there are on women in TV programmes, for example - when TV series take up more of our time and attention that the ads which fly by every day. But he make-up adverts referred to above remind us of a concern uniquely applicable to advertising - that it is produced by capitalists who want to cultivate insecurities which they can then sell 'solutions' to. Germaine Greer put the case strongly in her book The Whole Woman (1999):
Every woman knows that, regardless of her other achievements she is a failure is she is not beautiful...The UK beauty industry takes £8.9 billion out of women's pockets. Magazines financed by the beauty industry teach little girls that they need make-up and train them to use it, so establishing their lifelong reliance on beauty products. Not content with showing pre-teens how to use foundations, powders, concealers, blushers, eye-shadows, eye-liners, lip-liners, lipstick, lip gloss, the magazines identify problems of dryness, flakiness, blackheads, shininess, dullness, blemishes, puffiness, oiliness, spots, greasiness, that little girls are meant to treat with moisturisers, fresheners, masks, packs, washes lotions, cleansers, toners, scrubs, astringents ... Pre-teen cosmetics are relatively cheap but within a few years more sophisticated marketing will have persuaded the most level headed woman to throw money away on alchemical preparations containing anything from silk to cashmere, pearls, proteins, royal jelly ... anything real or phoney that might fend off her imminent collapse into hideous decrepitude.
| Author | Germaine Greer |
| Year published: | 1999 |
| Book title: | The whole woman |
| City: | New York |
| Publisher: | Anchor Books |
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