Slow Motion. Images of Women in Vogue Italia’s Fashion Advertisements over the Last Fifty Year

The international studies on gender and advertising date back to the early Seventies and cut across various disciplines, such as sociology (Goffman 1976), mass communications (Busby 1975), feminist theory (Barthel 1988), critical theory (Williamson 1978), and marketing (Courtney and Lockeretz 1971, Wagner and Banos 1973, Belkaoui and Belkaoui 1976). Despite some interesting exceptions (Alreck, Settle and Belch 1982, Gentry, Doering, and O'Brien 1978), these studies mainly focus on sexual-stereotype, female representations and role portrayals. To integrate this perspective, we studied the classical theme of gender in advertising, focusing on the television representation (little studied in Italy) of men, women and transgender figures, analyzing the intra-gender and inter-gender dynamics and using a quali-quantitative methodology. Since most studies reveals that the Italian representation of men and women in advertising is quite traditional and stereotypical, we went in search of richer and more realistic role portrayals. The analysis presented is a part of a larger research conducted by the GEMMA Observatory of La Sapienza University. It concerns the schedule of a rebuilt week of the six main TV Italian networks recorded from 8 am to 2 am. We analyzed all the 815 unique spots (on a total of 9979 commercials) and their 1798 characters. First, we used the content-analysis, considered as a mix between the Berelson’s "classical" approach (1952) and the analysis as investigation; then we carried out a qualitative research of some case studies. The study revealed that the representation of gender in Italian advertising is still quite traditional. However, the apparent stiff frames of men and women reflect a moving image. The new representations do not constitute a trend, but they revealed that the topic is more complex than it appears and the issues are much more nuanced than in the past.