Advertisement Analysis Selling Women on a King\'s

Advertisement Analysis

Selling Women on a King's Length

In the January 2001 issue of Vanity Fair, Virginia Slims released a fold-out four page ad for their then-new prototype of longer cigarettes, the "Kings" version. This ad well deserves to be analyzed, because it seems to make a strange variety of false and even absurd claims for the cigarettes based purely on the non-related advertising imagery.

This ad is obviously targeted at the modern upper/middle-class women, with all that implies. Readers are assumably white, college educated, heterosexual, with decent disposable income. Vanity Fair appears to be aimed at both single women (including many tips on dating and sexual liaisons) and attached or married women, who are often assumed to be employed.

The ad itself does not seem to have a particularly different audience. It addresses the educated and upper-class nature of its readers through its interest in Egyptology and association with the aristocracy of Egypt; it also addresses their modernity and feminist employment by featuring a "woman who would be king."

The first of the four page layout shows what is implied to be a royal Egyptian male standing opposite an Egyptian woman wearing or ornate headdress and carrying a Pharoanic, surrounded by various hieroglyphic phrases. (One appears to refer to the reincarnation of the soul, though it would take a great deal of work to translate them and they may in fact be nonsensical) Between these two figures English letters read "Some women have always known their place." The subsequent page features a photograph of an Egyptian female statue with the label: "Hatshepsut the Woman who would be King." This is followed by a short pseudo-historical description of Hatshepsut's ascension to the place of Pharaoh, which had been traditionally filled by men. This is followed by another blaze of bright red font reading "see yourself as a KING." The opposing page advertises the new Virginia Slims Kings, "A whole NEW SLIMS in the LENGTH you enjoy." The box of cigarettes pictured is accompanied by a slender silver lighter with hieroglyphs on it. The bright colors (the background is green with golden and blue egyptian images and bright red font) in complementary colors speak of power and attraction, and the antiqued looks of the page and graphics ads to the seeming classiness of the product.

The advertisement makes a number of claims, on a variety of subjects. On the surface of the ad, it merely claims that the new cigarette type is longer and also enjoyable. This is probably true for smokers. The ad also implies strongly, by association between the cigarettes and advertisement context, that the use of these cigarettes make women more kingly, powerful, and masculine (Hatshepsut was a cross-dresser in a man's world), and in fact suggests that these cigarettes can replace the woman's missing penis.

There are a number of various obvious propaganda devices in this ad, the most obvious and amusing of which is the blatant non-sequitor at the heart of the ad. In essence, this ad says, "one a woman was a Pharaoh and so you should buy our cigarettes." There is absolutely no logical link between the fact that Hatshepsut became a king and that Virginia Slims Kings cigarettes are enjoyable.

This connection between the power which enabled Hatshepsut to take the throne and the power of addiction which links women to their cigarettes could also be construed as something of a false analogy. This ad appeals to penis envy, in a very Freudian sense, falsely suggesting that the phallus of a cigarette can replace the phallus of a penis which women may wish they have. To understand how obvious this phallus imagery is, one needs only follow the obvious links -- the mention of women needing to know their place and that this place is to become (a male gendered) king by taking on a new length to be enjoyed.

Ironically, there is also a red herring sort of argument going on in this ad. By advertising the fact that these cigarettes make a woman more masculine and more Egyptian-like, they distract from the small warnings facts that state the cigarettes are unsafe for pregnant women and fetuses, and threaten fertility. The ad focuses extensively on ideas of female empowerment -- that women can take charge of their lives and of public affairs, and can become the equal of men. By waving about this red herring of female empowerment, the ad distracts from the fact that cigarettes are dangerous, addictive, and even deadly. There is a certain irony in this, in many ways. First, it will be recalled that Egypt's Pharaohs were associated with the fertility and growth of their land and population, and yet this ad itself admits that cigarettes threaten one's offspring. Additionally, the freedom and equality suggested in the add stands at odds with the fact that cigarettes are addictive and thus strip their users of some measure of choice.