Adverts Through The Ages

Beauty Advertising

For this new unit our task is to eventually produce an advertisement based on our inspirational word ‘fill’ which I have explained previously. The idea and concept of Beauty Adverts have been around for a long time explaining and portraying products to the general public. Through this lecture I learnt about the history of the Beauty Advert and how it has developed over time and how it has been adapted through location, time and events. In this blog I will be explaining brief parts of the history of the Beauty Adverts and how it has come to be how it is to the modern day.

Advertising is the activity or profession of producing advertisements for commercial products or services which by having a great image can improve their sells for their products. The companies always want to beat their competitors by making a high standard of product and wanting the buyer to be happy with their product. As stated in the lecture most of the adverts are based around women whether they include beautiful women or attractive women doing a form of housework while being watched over by her adoring husband. Some may agree this can portray women in many ways; one as a sexual object or either as a women of basic house work, making you wonder as a women when we will be shown as powerful. Considering this accusation made I wanted to research further into the idea of sexism in advertising which I found some interesting facts in this article; ‘Women in Advertisements and Body Image’.

The article states that sexism has been around in advertising for a long time portraying women to be expected in certain roles such as; cleaning, cooking and even sex objects. Compared to today we are starting to make this assumption of women disappear and it is usually looked down upon but we need this to change for the adverts of the future. However, in the 1950’s things were very different for women as these kinds of representation were very normal and excepted in the society even if they were very insulting towards women, people excepted this stereotype and found it very normal. It also states that the adverts would include picture of husbands as to highlight that women would need/want to buy these products to impress your husband. The ads would include phrases like; “Don’t worry darling, you didn’t burn the beer!,” “Men are better than women!,” and “Christmas morning: she’ll be happier with a Hoover!” not only created a stigma for women in general, but they were shockingly blunt and irrefutably left no room for interpretation’. As of course these kinds of phrases would not be allowed in ads of today but there is still a subtle hold back in adverts to show women as strong and powerful females.

Throughout the lecture we were taught about the brief history of the ‘beauty adverts’ first starting off around the ‘flapper’ period. Later on in 1909 Gordon Selfridge opened the first ever beauty counters which allowed women to try before they buy which was a massive hit as it like this all over the world. The first styles of adverts were illustrations before photos using famous faces to sell their products but they would usually explain a story also, unlike today. The 1930’s look was based on Hollywood and the current stars of the time, one of the main shared looks where the pencil thin eyebrows and lighter shades compared to the dark shades (1920’s). As time went on new products came around as well including; cream eye-shadow, lip gloss, water soluble make-up and waterproof mascara. In the 1940’s films star of the time would sell their names to adverts to promote their products while also including small writes of their films. Despite the war on women was still wanting to use makeup and to send letters with kiss marks to their loved ones fighting. This kind of statement shows that the time/history does influence the selling of products of the time and it continues to this day. When the 1950’s came around it was the beginning of the ‘Golden Age’ where advertising became big as people where able to buy home TV’s. This elegant eye, pale pinks and powdered look from the 50’s followed into the 60’s also evolving the classic look, the mod and the hippy. A lot of ads in the 1900’s tolled women what was wrong with them therefore for them to buy their products that would supposedly fix ‘all’ their beauty problems. Examples of these would be like ‘assault on the underarm’ telling women that body hair is gross and MUST be removed, skin bleaching, skin lightening, tans, cellulite, un-manicured nails, longer eye lashes etc.

Overall, as we have seen the adverts and style of adverts have changed a lot over time compared too today. Many reasons I believe is through the idea of history, therefore as society changes so does advertisements and the way they are presented. For example the 1950’s women were demined in adverts making them either plain house wives over-hung by women or seen as pretty sex objects, as well as the new advertisements styles of the TV ads when TV’s entered people’s homes. These points prove my reasons but I believe that adverts will changed and eventually women will be shown as powerful figures while still selling on fabulous products.