Gender, Consumption, and Ideology in Advertising Across Eras

Introduction: Sex, Gender, and the Advertising Industry

When Edward Bernays — nephew of Sigmund Freud and widely regarded as the father of modern advertising — first shaped the industry, he relied on a lesson learned from his uncle: sex sells. Bernays understood, as Freud did, that sex is one of the most powerful motivating forces of human nature (Jones). Sex and gender consequently took center stage in advertising throughout the twentieth century and beyond. This paper examines the way that gender, consumption, and ideology are tied together in advertising across several decades. It argues that sex and gender stereotypes persist in advertising media and that sexual content has grown more provocative over time — this despite successive waves of feminist movements.

Today, sexuality is something that women are often presented as wielding to dominate men. The advertisements analyzed here suggest that sex and gender remain powerful forces in advertising regardless of the ideological positions held by men and women at any given moment. Human nature appears unchanged, and advertising reflects that constancy: ads have grown more sexual over time and may be less overtly sexist, but they remain deeply sexual. In this way, advertisers seem more attentive to formal equality while simultaneously becoming more aggressive in their pursuit of what Laura Mulvey called the "male gaze" (Turow 195). Whether women are genuinely empowered by claiming ownership of their sexuality is difficult to determine, since the underlying objective still appears to be making men feel gratified. How that outcome benefits women in terms of real power remains an open question — unless, as E. Michael Jones suggests, the goal is to make men slaves to their own desire. Examining advertisements from the past several decades can at least reveal how gender, consumption, and ideology intertwine to produce a message, whatever that message ultimately means.

The Schlitz Ad and the Budweiser Contrast

The first advertisement to consider is a 1952 ad produced by the beer maker Schlitz. It features a woman dressed in a blouse and skirt, weeping at a stove where she has clearly just burned dinner. Her husband, neatly dressed in a dark suit, is happily consoling her with a hug while pointing to the bright side — his untouched beer on the table — with the caption: "Don't worry darling, you didn't burn the beer!" She gazes up at him with gratitude, as if thinking, What did I do to deserve such a wonderful man? The ad uses humor to carry its message about gender. It is simultaneously condescending to women and lighthearted in its treatment of a familiar domestic scenario. Rather than expressing frustration, the husband finds comfort in his beer. The woman is consoled by her husband; the husband is consoled by his beer. Everything, the ad implies, exists to serve the husband. He stands neat and handsome, and the world appears to be at his feet.

By contrast, a contemporary beer advertisement — such as those associated with the Budweiser brand today — presents a strikingly different image. Where the woman in the Schlitz ad is not sexualized, a feminist reading of that ad identifies a clearly sexist sentiment in its domestic framing. The modern ad complicates feminist analysis differently. Some would argue it depicts an empowered woman claiming ownership of her sexuality to inspire male desire. Mulvey, representing an older generation of feminist thought, would contend that such an image demeans women by turning them into objects. Feminist ideology is therefore not uniform in its judgment of how gender, sex, and consumption should intersect.

Does it matter whether a woman feels empowered by her sexual self-presentation in an advertisement? Feona Atwood frames the progression this way: "Where once sexualized representations of women in the media presented them as the passive, mute objects of an assumed male gaze, today women are presented as active, desiring sexual subjects who choose to present themselves in a seemingly objectified manner because it suits their liberated interests to do so" (100). The question, then, remains unresolved: a woman must decide for herself whether she is liberated as a sexual subject or constrained by a male gaze that pressures her to be sexualized, whether as an object of desire or as a domestic figure like the one in the Schlitz ad. As Mary Celeste Kearney reminds us, "media are sites of considerable ideological negotiation and contestation, that is, sites of struggle over meaning and values" (3). The meaning will differ for different viewers, both men and women.

Sansabelt and the Male-Centered Gaze

A second advertisement illuminates how gender operated in advertising during an earlier transition period. Produced in the early 1970s by the pants company Sansabelt, the ad shows a man in the foreground wearing a comfortable pair of slacks, hands extended toward the viewer to display them. The pants are labeled "Action Pants" at the top of the ad. Printed directly over the man's crotch area is the label "Action Zone" — an unmistakable sexual reference. Behind him, a woman walks a poodle and is bent slightly at the waist, angled as if trying to see around the man toward his "action zone." Her skirt falls to the knee — shorter than the woman's skirt in the Schlitz ad from two decades earlier — suggesting that women's fashion had by this point become more accepting of visible sexuality. Yet the woman in this ad is still positioned behind the man, not on equal footing. He leads; she follows.

This spatial hierarchy echoes the Schlitz ad, where the man also occupies the foreground and the woman stands slightly behind him. Both ads signal that the man is the leader and the most important figure in any male-female relationship, because his pleasure is what the imagery centers. Even the dog in the Sansabelt ad appears to acknowledge this hierarchy, lifting its head toward the man's "action zone."

Taken together, all three ads examined here — Schlitz, the contemporary beer ad, and Sansabelt — communicate that the man is the professional, the leader, and the focal point of social life. The woman exists to serve him, whether by cooking his dinner or satisfying his desire. Beer exists to comfort him. A sexualized woman on the beer bottle helps sell it today. What does this imply for gender roles or sexual equality? Has post-feminism led women to accept and even embrace the role of sexual being — not as servants of the male gaze, but as its dominators? Is that the logic behind the more explicit sexual self-presentation visible in contemporary advertising?

Conclusion: What Advertising Reveals About Gender and Power

It is difficult to measure how far ideas about sex and gender have actually changed over the years in advertising. Ideology has shifted, and so has the way women think of themselves, their ownership of their bodies, and their relationship to the male gaze. But in advertising itself, ideology tends to dissolve. What remains is the blunt instrument: a woman on a beer bottle, sex selling the product — exactly as Edward Bernays predicted it would. Freud taught that sex is a primary motivating force of human behavior. While other forces certainly operate, sex remains a powerful one. The fact that gender is still depicted in advertising according to this logic suggests that ideology is, in practice, something people discuss rather than something that fundamentally alters economic behavior.

When it comes to actual consumption — to spending real money — men are still apparently lured by women and by images of male dominance and importance. Advertising continues to suggest that men are what matter most. Yet a counterargument is available: the women who appear in these ads are themselves using their sexuality to move products, and perhaps they derive satisfaction, agency, or financial gain from doing so. Perhaps they are empowered. Perhaps they are dominating the male viewer rather than being dominated. Or perhaps the companies producing these ads simply know that sex sells, and find it more effective to persuade women that they are empowered so that those women will willingly sexualize themselves on behalf of the brand. The answer is not obvious, and advertising — by design — does not offer one.

Works Cited

Atwood, Feona. Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualization of Western Culture. IB Tauris, 2014.

Evans, A., and S. Riley. Technologies of Sexiness: Sex, Identity, and Consumer Culture. Sexuality, Identity, and Society. Oxford University Press, 2015.

Jones, E. Michael. Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control. St. Augustine's Press, 2000.

Kearney, M. C., ed. The Gender and Media Reader. Routledge, 2012.

Turow, J. The Advertising and Consumer Culture Reader. Routledge, 2009.