• The following essay was written for a composition class in 2004. Its thesis is that modern advertising is layered with many messages that ultimately inform our values as much or more than they sell products, and that these values often reinforce negative stereotypes.

In western culture we are inundated by advertisements every day. These ads convey insidious messages that are not only intended to sell products but are also concerned with how we are supposed to behave, often specifically depending on our gender. Messages that convey underlying gender stereotypes manipulate how both men and women feel about themselves and others, and accordingly these stereotypes affect how we act toward others. The behaviors that are perpetuated by many ads reinforce the objectification and subjugation of women in our society. This essay explores the phenomenon of gender stereotyping and the objectification of women in advertisements by referring to the ideas in John Berger's Ways of Seeing and Kathleen Frith's article Undressing the Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising, with regard to a specific advertisement for Microsoft's Office System software.

Berger and Frith address the importance of looking closer at how we are affected by the images that surround us. Their texts examine how by having a passive relationship to the images we see, we empower ads to affect how we feel about ourselves and others. In order to respond to the challenges posed by these texts, we will take a closer look at Microsoft's ad for their Office System product, and in so doing perhaps begin to strip away the power that advertisements hold over us.

Berger explains how modern advertising reveals more about our beliefs and value systems than tells us what to buy. In the realm of publicity, acquiring things becomes secondary to a host of more significant social cues that are at the core of our belief systems. Berger says, "[Advertising] is not merely an assembly of competing messages: it is a language in itself, which is always being used to make the same general proposal. It proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves by buying something more" (Berger, 131). The purchase is necessary primarily as a means of creating and bolstering a sense of personal identity. In the Microsoft advertisement, the transformation that Berger refers to is twofold: the ad suggests to the prospective buyer that, according to Berger, "if he buys what it is offering, his life will become better" (Berger, 142), and there is also an implicit sexual proposition being made. It is being suggested to the consumer that if he buys this software he will be sexually desirable. Berger supports this when he says "publicity increasingly uses sexuality to sell any product [...] if you are able to buy this product you will be lovable. If you cannot buy it, you will be less lovable" (Berger, 144). In Undressing the Ad Kathleen Frith helps us to further dissect the implicit messages that Berger shows us are being conveyed by this and other advertisements.

Frith begins where Berger leaves off with her exploration of how "embedded in advertising's messages about goods and services are the cultural roles and values that define our everyday lives" (Frith, 3). Frith offers us tools "that are based on literary and artistic methods of critique" (Frith, 4) in which to read the various layers within advertisements, and thereby understand them at more than their face value. If we were to take the Microsoft ad at face value we might think that the people in the ad are acting silly and out of character with what we would expect in a corporate office and simply laugh it off. Instead, with Frith's help, we are able to unravel the underlying messages in the ad and see how the pervasive gender roles that prevail in our culture are used to sell software. Frith prompts us to "learn how to critically deconstruct advertisements [so that] we can begin to move away from the role of spectator to become participants [...]" (Frith, 14). She offers methodologies that help to further dissect and analyze the Microsoft ad.

The Surface Meaning of the Ad. The advertisement's caption reads, "Great moments at work. You just brought busywork to its knees. The title is yours." The ad depicts two men standing victoriously on a conference room table - as if one of them had just won a boxing match and the other is declaring him the champion. On all sides of the two men are numerous well-dressed male and female office colleagues clapping and cheering. Clearly, the use of Microsoft Office was a winning choice.

The Advertiser's Intended Meaning. The advertisement appears to be working on many levels to make the product desirable. MicrosoftÕs intention with the ad is to make us believe that their Office software helps consumers overcome obstacles. The obstacles may be office related in that the consumer will be a 'champion' and adulated by co-workers for making everyone's job easier. They may also be of a personal nature. If the consumer can win the adulation of women perhaps he will be more sexually desirable as a result of using the product, or as the previous Berger quote suggests, 'lovable' (Berger, 144). Of particular interest in the ad is a slender, blonde woman dressed in a short skirt who is sitting directly in front of the victorious man at the level of his groin. Her hands are apart as in a clapping motion that in the context of the image resembles a state of suppliant sexual worship. Furthermore, the victorious man appears to be sexually aroused or at least somewhat well endowed, and the woman appears to be eager to receive him.

The Cultural and Ideological Meaning of the Ad. Frith notes that, "in addition to the more obvious cultural beliefs, there are also more subtle ideological values expressed in ads. Stereotyping is based on cultural beliefs" (Frith, 5). Our culture has a legacy of stereotyping women as powerless housewives and sexual objects who are dependent on men. In this culture, men are generally considered to be the champions, or "Kings of the Hill," and women are expected to support, flatter and bestow upon men sexual favor. These assumptions about how the genders should behave run deeply in our belief system and affect everyone in our culture, regardless of whether or not we agree with them. Seen in this context, the advertisement clearly plays on what Frith refers to as this "shared [...] cultural belief" (Frith, 5). Even if we were to remove the sexual innuendo from our analysis, the implication in this ad is that men are the champions, not women

Analysis of Social Relationships in the Ad. In Ways of Seeing Berger illustrates the fundamental differences between how men and women are seen in images:

The essential way of seeing women, the essential use to which their images are put, has not changed. Women are depicted in a quite different way from men, not because the feminine is different than the masculine, but because the 'ideal' spectator is assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him (Berger, 64).

Berger goes on to present the reader with a simple experiment in order to make his point:

Choose an image of a traditional [female] nude. Transform the woman into a man...then notice the violence which that transformation does. Not to the image, but to the assumptions of a likely viewer (Berger, 64).

In the Microsoft advertisement, what happens when we exchange the men on the table with women? The resulting situation would seem implausible, or at the least gratuitous. This is not because a woman could not be a victorious Information Technology manager, but because portraying a woman in this role seems incongruous with what we normally expect in our society. Couple this with Berger's idea that "the 'ideal' spectator is assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him" (Berger, 64) and it is no wonder that the gender roles are such as they are in the ad. In Undressing the Ad Frith asks, by way of quoting William O'Barr from his book Culture and the Ad: Exploring Otherness in the World of Advertising, "Who holds the power [...] who is dominant and who is subordinate?" In the case of the Microsoft ad it is clear who holds the power and who is dominant - the men.

The woman sitting in front of the victorious man is being stereotyped as the typical supporter of men, and her body positioning is a form of conventionalization that reduces her to a sexual object. Her presence in the ad is designed to flatter the man who has just overcome all obstacles by using the product that is being advertised. The power relationship in the ad reinforces the assumption that men are powerful, victorious conquerors and women are submissive supporters of men. This power relationship is central to the effectiveness of the ad and illustrates how ads use gender stereotypes and the objectification of women to sell products. Men can overcome or "conquer" obstacles at work and thus they receive the adulation of women. Without these underlying messages, the ad is reduced to a silly portrayal of nerdy men who seemingly don't have much to get excited about except software, otherwise why would this supposedly great software illicit such a passionate reaction from them. Microsoft knows that appealing to people's passion for software probably isn't enough to sell mass quantities of their products. There are other passions that they can appeal to that are more universal and that are therefore much more likely to generate great sales results. Those other passions are of a sexual nature.

Advertising techniques that portray women as submissive sexual beings perpetuate negative stereotypes. These stereotypes are not benign or passive. They reinforce attitudes that lead to negative actions being taken toward women. To reverse social assumptions about how men and women should act toward one another, consumers must empower themselves by turning on the lights and looking under the covers of advertisements that sexualize women. By doing so we can put an end to the objectification of women - an objectification that is used not only to sell us stuff, but as a way of manipulating how we see, think, and act. As long as mass advertising messages such as that employed by the Microsoft Office System continue, the objectification and subjugation of women shall continue. If we truly wish to do away with the damaging attitudes toward women that seem to prevail in our society, then we must be diligent in our critique of how these attitudes are reinforced in our culture, and we must vigorously challenge our culture to change.

Works Cited

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation, Penguin Books Ltd., 1972.

Frith, Kathleen Toland. "Undressing the Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising." Undressing the Ad. Ed. Kathleen T. Frith. New York, Peter Lang Publishing, 1998. 3-14.

Microsoft Office System Advertisement. The New Yorker 2 February 2004: 7.