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Looking at Adverts: 10 - The Open College of the Arts

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Looking at Adverts: 10 thumb

Looking at Adverts: 10

Recently I attended a conference called ‘Femininity, Masculinity and the Post-Human’. I presented a paper that argued that ‘selfies’ could disrupt gender and ‘ideal body’ stereotypes as well as reinforce them. One of the participants at the conference, who gave a fascinating presentation about masculine stereotypes in Mexico, showed me this advertisement.

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The advert begins as a man dressed in grey stands in a predominantly grey corridor or lobby. He gets into the lift and begins to pull pouting faces while taking selfies. A sharp noise from behind causes the man to turn around. There he faces a glowering Sylvester Stallone, who looks at the man in an intimidating, disapproving manner. He then tells the man he should ‘watch more boxing’. What could be described as an effeminate song issues from the man’s mobile phone and in a state of panic he presses the lift’s alarm button. As the Rockie theme tune kicks in the advert cuts to a boxing match with a large audience and prominent Tecate beer logos. The greyness of the first part of the advert contrasts sharply with the strong black, red and blue colours in the boxing scene.
Boxing is a source of national pride because Mexico has produced more amateur and professional world champions than any other country. This is demonstrated by a Government social programme called ‘Boxing for a Safer Mexico’, in which former greats of Mexico’s boxing history join forces to give boxing master classes and motivate children to discipline themselves with boxing instead of joining gangs.
Although this is a commendable message for social inclusion and community sports, the Tecate beer advertisement isn’t prescribing boxing as an antidote to crime; instead it is an antidote to femininity. Because the man in the advert is taking selfies it is suggested that he isn’t ‘manly’. It reinforces the idea that men’s selfies are unacceptable because they are narcissistic.
The term narcissism comes from Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid. In the poem Narcissus, a beautiful youth, rejects the amorous advances of all others and is punished with the curse ‘Oh may he love like me, and love like me in vain!’ He catches sight of his own face in a pool of water and falls in love with the reflection. He is captivated and dies because he cannot tear himself away.

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In psychoanalysis narcissism denotes a person who takes his or her own body as the object of desire. Like Narcissus, the individual becomes so consumed by their own beauty they are not interested in anyone else. When discussing the Oedipus Complex Freud suggests that women are more prone to narcissism than men, because they have to use their bodies to access patriarchal power. The female child unconsciously decides that she can only gain power vicariously by attracting a man and producing male children, so she devotes time and energy to making herself desirable. This was the outcome most suitable for women born into nineteenth century society. Narcissism in men was deemed to be effeminate and a sign of homosexuality.
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In contemporary consumer society the variety and quantity of cosmetic products targeting male consumers has risen sharply, so it is surprising that the idea of narcissistic femininity has remained a defining component of gender stereotypes. The Tecate Beer advert suggests that a man, with access to the power and privilege associated with masculinity shouldn’t care what he looks like. He will attract attention due to his power and not because he is an object of desire. This is underscored by the prescribed cure – watch more boxing – a display of power and force. This idea is underlined by the use of colour; the man who is obsessed about his looks is grey and will not attract attention but the boxers are colourful and seem to burst out of the frame.
I have to admit that I don’t take selfies, in fact, I am pretty averse to having my photograph taken under any circumstances (probably quite strange for an artist who worked with self-portraiture for many years). But I am fascinated by the phenomena and I would be interested to know what people think? Is a gender bias around the number of selfies you can take and the types of locations, events and poses that are permissible? If selfies reinforce gender (and other social) stereotypes, could they also disrupt or challenge them?
 
 
 


Posted by author: Dawn Woolley

15 thoughts on “Looking at Adverts: 10

  • Well there’s a lot in here! Really interesting. Here are my thoughts to add to the conversation…
    1. Are selfie-takers narcissists? I’ve just come back from a week in Croatia where every other person seemed to be stopping to take a selfie using a selfie stick. The Croatian coast is a magnet for cruise ships and for young travelers, so I saw lots of middle aged Japanese tourists, and lots of twenty-somethings doing the selfie thing. It didn’t look narcissistic, but rather it seemed to be part of the holiday fun to snuggle up with friends and try to squeeze into the frame together with a backdrop of gorgeous blue sea, or ‘Game of Thrones’ historic monument. (I’d put Barak Obama’s ‘team selfies’ in that category too). Perhaps the narcissists are those who spend hours posing alone to get the perfect angle of themselves?
    2. Are selfies gender biased? Again based on my recent holiday experience, I’d say that this is not the case – out on the street at any rate. But behind closed doors? Some people can’t walk past a mirror or a reflective surface without looking at themselves and doing a bit of preening – I’d take a guess that they are also the folks making the perfect selfies.
    3. I have friends who have turned selfies into a way of sharing their sense of humor and joy of life on social media. One (male) friend takes selfies called his ‘Facinator’ series where he takes the photo at just the right angle so that objects behind him look like they are on his head. It started off by accident but now it’s a fabulous game. He’s a great world traveler so we’ve seen increasingly creative ‘fascinators’ from every corner of the globe, and there’s always a flurry of quips from friends as soon as he posts them. And recently ( on Graham Norton) Samuel L Jackson was showing his selfies where he barely features in the photo…just enough of his hat or ear to give a clue that it’s him ( is that narcissistic? I don’t know)
    Like you I don’t especially like being in photos so I don’t do selfies – but I love it when other people do fun and surprising things with them as a way of showing us another view of the world.

  • Thanks for your comments Carol. I take your point about the ‘act’ of taking selfies with friends and the difference between holiday snaps and selfies taken alone in a private space (the later group do seem to be the most common ones when you type selfie into a search engine). I also saw a lot of selfie stick users in Dubrovnik – I did find it a little odd that the person has to turn their back on a view in order to take a selfie with it – do they then turn around and take in the view afterwards or is the image enough? I think there is also a difference between spontaneous snapshots of the self and the more posed perfectionist ones. In Dubrovnik I watched a young woman pose for numerous selfies because she seemed dissatisfied with the results each time. I wonder if this is a sign of narcissism, or whether the advent of the camera phone has made us hyper-sensitive to the way we look?

  • Surely the holiday selfy is just the contemporary version of asking a stranger to take a picture of you in front of some tourist attraction?
    The posing-in-front-of-the-mirror version is another thing entirely!

  • Regarding the holiday selfie, I still think there are two types. The couple or group shot which is largely unposed, and where any preening and pouting tends to be self-deprecating. It’s more of a visual instant postcard, a ‘this is now’ as opposed to a traditional holiday photo [pre-digital] ‘that was then’. The locale or the food etc is as important or more important than the people. But having recently returned from a resort in Egypt, I saw many ‘this is me’ selfies being captured. Where single females [predominantly, but not exclusively] would use the blank phone as a virtual mirror to reapply make-up, brush hair, rearrange clothing and practise pouting and posing, before turning the camera on themselves. Whereas the ‘this is now’ images mentioned above seemed more a light-hearted way of sharing experiences, I felt the second were weird, that they were a ‘this is me’ and ‘I am here’ designed to elicit two-fold envy on the part of the viewer. I spent a large part of my holiday watching and trying to understand!

  • I feel it is all part of the post-postmodern take on the society of the spectacle…”if it ain’t on me ‘phone; it didn’t happen” Watch this year’s Glastonbury on the TV and I am sure that you will see all those people with their phones in the air broadcasting to their friends who have to watch on TV at home…and all those in galleries who don’t look at the work on the walls but take a pic and them study their phone!
    It is no longer 15 mins of fame but 15Gb of Facebook pix.

  • There is some international. city-based research on the selfie on this site:- http://selfiecity.net/#intro
    One conclusion is that females are more likely to take selfies than males – especially in Moscow! Something else that seems to emerge in one of the essays is that the selfie is as much about belonging, or wanting to belong, as it is about narcissism. It is a genre of photographic image that is created to be shared on social media, primarily with ‘friends’ (using the social media version of that term, of course!). So perhaps more to do with “look at me and ‘like’ me” that “wow I’m so attractive”?

    • Good point – we forget that the virtual realm is also a virtual community – I guess the appreciation of someone else’s selfie offers them support and a confidence boost!

  • I do not partake in the generic smart phone selfies; yet the past few years I have staged more self-portraiture style shoots. For me this is associated with body confidence through losing 9 stone in weight. So I have been keen to visually explore my new shape and appearance.
    Men rarely discuss their weight and body shape; I was 21 stone, I knew I was fat and I felt ashamed, so much so that I avoided cameras quite fiercely. Now, through hard work I have achieved a very healthy weight, which in turn has boosted my confidence. I will admit that a level of narcissism has crept in, I do admire some aspects of my body and feel proud to show them off.
    For an over the top selfie, check this out: http://russellsquires.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/hashtag-selfie-sticks-are-lame.html

    • I think your comments raise an important point about who is ‘allowed’ to present his or her body online – I think selfies have huge potential for creativity and disruption of all sorts of body and gender ideals, but at the moment peer pressure and body-shaming make it disciplinary – coercing people into the norm….

  • I find the issue of narcissism and gender bias quite fascinating. I was prompted to research it when I myself was worried about accusations of narcissism when drawing self portraits for assignment 5 of drawing one. The vernacular use of ‘narcissist’ meaning vain and self-absorbed does seem to be more frequently levelled at women than men. I was particularly interested to note that Hannah Wilke’s work “I-Object – memoirs of a sugar giver” was dismissed by many feminists as narcissistic.
    I’ve attached a link here:
    http://aylishgiamei.blogspot.it/2014/07/assignment-5-preliminary-research-and.html

  • Thanks for the link to your work Aylish. I think your drawings and the photographs you worked from have a visual style that is certainly not narcissistic. The close cropping, which draws attention to the features of the face one by one, scrutinise rather than narcissistically promote or ‘show off’. The facial expressions also make it clear that the images are not designed for this purpose! I think there is heated debate around some of Wilke’s work because they can be read in quite objectifying and narcissistic terms. They resemble idealised images of the female body so it is not clear cut as to whether it is empowering, critical or celebrating female body ideals – which makes it fascinating work!

  • Good evening,
    Part of Identity and Place asks you write a blog post on these images. Though for some reason I don’t see anything?

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