REPRESENTATION OF GENDER IN DEODORANT ADVERTISEMENTS; A SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF AXE PRINT ADVERTISING
REPRESENTATION OF GENDER IN DEODORANT ADVERTISEMENTS; A SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF AXE PRINT ADVERTISING

Summary/Abstract: Advertisements give us clues to understand the role of gender in societies and social life; because in advertising of all kinds of products, advertisements are not pure communication forms but ideological texts that interpellate individuals as subjects. Besides the promotion of the products, certain lifestyles and identities are offered to the consumers through advertisements. In today's consumer society, advertising contributes significantly to the establishment of dualistic gender roles and the propagation of sexual identities. It is common for advertising campaigns to invoke gender identity through the use of stereotyped iconography of masculinity and femininity. This study aims to explore the cultural construction of femininity regarding the usage of language and images as ideological apparatuses in the advertisements. It analyses how advertising imagery builds and maintains conceptions of masculinity, by reflecting upon representation, consumption, and identity. In the beginning, the article takes an overview at the brand and the campaign, and then it goes on to examine the visual representations of the female body in the advertisement at the levels of denotation, connotation, and myth. This analysis bases on the Roland Barthes‘s semiological approach. As a result of the semiotic analysis, it is seen that Axe-3 ad reproduces several myths such as the myth of patriarchal society, the myth of the modern woman and the myth of being sporty and thin.

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