“Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.”
– John Burger, Way of Seeing.
Mass media and history have created a sophisticated male-female interaction in which men are seen as having more dominant authority than women. Men are athletic, muscular, and daring. Women are tender, playful, and subservient. As a result, the potentials and limitations of the stories and narratives that each gender can tell are determined by these gender roles. Advertisers and marketing experts are the most aware of this, and they meticulously analyze gender connections in order to infuse their goods with certain meanings or emotions, therefore appealing to a specific demographic. Consumers who identify with or want to identify with certain meanings or feelings buy products.[1] Taking a closer look at advertising for alcoholic beverages in the post-war United States, it is evident to discern that the objectification and sexualization of women have been exploited in marketing strategies to advertise products that specifically targeted men. While several scholars choose to stay within the boundary of the 1950s era to analyze how postwar advertising campaigns re-branded gender roles for women, little research extended the scope into the 1960s era – with the emergence of the Second Feminist Movement – to see if it challenged or empowered the female narrative.
This paper attempts to illustrate the representation of women in male-targeted alcohol advertisements in the 1950s and in the 1960s and argue for the presence of the male gaze in both eras. Because the male gaze is apparent in 1950s advertisements of alcoholic beverages but not so in 1960s’s advertisements, I argue that despite the absence of men, and the advancement in the Feminist Wave, the seemingly independent female model in alcoholic advertisements of the 1960s is still suppressed by the male gaze and is still at service to men in these respects due to a history of serving men in the 1950s.
The paper is in chronological order and employs a critical visual analysis on various archived advertisements on alcoholic products (beer, vodka, etc.) that are representative of the 1950s and the 1960s. The analyses adopt the Theory of Semiotics of Advertising from Bernhard Ketteman, the constructionist Theory of Representation from Stuart Hall, Laura Mulvey’s concept of the male gaze and John Berger’s description of power dynamics between male and female via TV series “Ways of Seeing.” The paper will also draw from a historical discourse of the Cold War and the Second Feminist Movement and apply them to the 1950s and 1960s respectively to further elaborate on our observations in the advertisements.
The 1950s has been marked as the pinnacle of the Cold War for the United States, which proved to be critical to the shaping of the feminine figure in advertising. Picking up from the success of Rosie the Riveter from World War Two, advertising campaigns now used the same image of women to promote the importance of domesticity and value of family as stable units of societies.[2] As described by Vandermeade, the female figure has been progressively advanced to be participating in the war and taking up jobs previously held by men, who were serving the army, only to be irreversibly degraded to stereotypical roles of wives and mothers of the home in order to uphold values of traditionalism and domestic affairs, disseminate capitalism, and reject communism.[3]
"Lady of the house.” - the consequential portrayal.
This stereotype is especially common in products that have been historically associated with masculinity, patriarchy, and therefore, have been advertised to appeal to men. One such product is alcohol. A collection of beer advertisements in a domestic setting from the United States Brewer Foundation are shown below (Figure 1).
Figure 1
The site of creation of these magazine advertisements are worthy of discussion as it reveals that the main impetus is to present a charming glamorization of typical American households with its democratic ideals and the beer as harmony that unite everyone in the frame. It also reveals men, especially soldiers in the war, as the prime target audience since they cannot wait to return to a normal life as portrayed in the ads. After the war, the United States Brewers Foundation created an advertising campaign to promote beer as “America’s Beverage of Moderation,” which is a pivotal part of a stable home. The ads are in part of a series called “Home Life in America” and it is intended to foster an idealization of American life and to welcome the American soldiers back into the communities, enjoying the post-war prosperities.
On a pragmatic level, the catchphrase helps the advertisements incorporate the beer into American lives, which proves to be successful as the Beer Belongs campaign became the most successful American ad campaign of all time, “seen by millions of Americans and is quite possibly the reason why so many of [them] have beer in [their] homes at any given moment.”[4] The strategy created an irresistible desire for men to consume more alcohol. They did not just simply want the alcohol. They wanted the meaning that was fixated behind the alcohol. These men had probably returned from the war, so they craved a sense of security and a means to avoid pain and trauma. [5] Thus, they wanted that sustainable life, flawlessly depicted in the ads. The setting is intentionally domestic, placing the viewer in a typical home filled with furniture, decorations, and families. The men are in tuxedoes, the women are in dresses, and everyone is smiling. Each ad is in a different room, so the curious gentlemen could potentially look at five of these advertisements and get a sense of how his new house will look. The more he is exposed the alcohol, the more likely he is to purchase it.[6] Furthermore, a semantic analysis shows that three of the four advertisements have the text read:
In this home-loving land of ours … in this America of kindliness, of friendship, of good-humored tolerance … perhaps no beverages are more “at home” on more occasions than good American beer and ale. For beer and ale are the kind of beverages Americans like. They belong — to pleasant living, to good fellowship, to sensible moderation. And our right to enjoy them, this too belongs — to our own American heritage of personal freedom.[7]
On the top left of Figure 1, the text discusses “what makes a glass of beer tastes good?”[8] The two small text boxes underneath provide the answers: good books and conversations, gracious living, and a sip on a mellow glass of beer. All these semiotic signifiers embodies the glamorous living which the man can achieve if he drinks the beer.
The amalgamation of appeal to consume alcoholic drinks and the male-centric glamorization of American domesticity has simultaneously marginalized femininity and suppress the representation of female in a way that puts them at lower power than men. Focusing again on Figure 1, but now with an emphasis on how the female figure is portrayed, it becomes evident that she is at the service of men. On the top right scene, the woman is carrying a tray of beer bottles and glasses, presumably to serve her husband who is playing the piano. On the bottom left scene, there is a figure of a hostess, where two women are setting up the dinner table for Thanksgiving, and the men are waiting outside the door. one man is looking at the woman, the other two looking directly at the viewer. The direct gaze from the two men at the camera is unsettling, their facial expressions suggesting how social norms at the time were held: It was the women’s job to serve dinner to men. It is the women’s and only the women’s responsibility to keep the house beautiful and tidy. For example, the woman on the bottom right advertisement is showing off her sparking clean kitchen to her friends and possibly her husband who is wearing the red tie – he looks proud of the result based on his smile. The spotless kitchen signifies an exemplary model of a housewife. Even with an activity such as knitting, seen in the top left advertisement, which society deems to be feminine, can be undermined as passive when juxtaposed with the successful bread winner figure of the house. Notice that the bread winners are always presented wearing suits and ties, and the housewives always wear house dresses; the two symbols set up the power inequality. Notice, too, that there is almost always an exchange of vision between the two sexes. From the gaze of the male, however, there is an expectation of perfectionism bestowed upon the female.
She is under the man’s surveillance. She could not do any other jobs but house chores. She is reduced to the stereotypical representation of traditional roles in the household, which is the result of deliberate advertising strategies from alcohol companies and propaganda to specifically target men to consume more alcohol.
Before proceeding to examine how the 1960s era portrayed women in alcohol advertising, it is necessary to recognize that while other scholars presented alternative representations of 1950s women, in which they were participating in other societal positions other than wives,[9]the overwhelming frequency in which women are objectified and the nature of feminine degradation could not be overlooked. For the stereotype of women would perpetuate for the entire decade and engrave a subconscious expectation of gender roles in American societies in the future,[10]“Americans began to accept advertising and propaganda images as indicative of a larger social construct of American femininity.”[11] As it shall be seen in the Feminine Mystique later published in 1963 by Betty Friedman, historian Joanne Meyerowitz assessed that Friedan “presented femininity [of the 1950s] as a problem […] [as it] demoted full time domesticity to the lower status of a false consciousness.”[12] Male figures are exercising dominance on female counterparts by purchasing alcoholics beverages, assuming their wives would deliver the beers as timely as how the advertisement would portray. In the section that follows, it will be argued that these ingrained prejudices, in which male is dominant and female is submissive, will be present in the 1960s era, and recognizing them would have been difficult had one not been visually aware of the unequal gender representation of the 1950s.
The 1960s are best known for the rise of the Second Feminist Movement. If, in the 1950s, white, middle-class women are told to be mothers and wives, confining themselves with “limited gender roles and a sense of isolation in the suburban nuclear family,”[13] in the 1960s, they are encouraged to seek equal rights and opportunities with men in all fields. Specifically in advertising, early signs of gender freedom can be observed in how alcohol advertisements are presented as shown below (Figure 2)(Figure 3).
Figure 2
Figure 3
The most perceptible sign that fundamentally differentiates the majority of the 1960s alcohol advertisements from those of the 1950s is the solely independent appearance of the female model in the scene. Unlike the 1950s, where the stereotypical housewife in suburban setting is prevalent, the 1960s places the woman in a variety of public scenes and gives her immense freedom by removing the man from the narrative and having her in center frame of the advertisement. In the 1960s, she is free to wear what she wants to wear, drink what she wants to drink, and poses how she wants to pose. In the 1960s, alcohol advertising has evolved, and women are no longer confined to the image stereotype of traditional roles and instead welcome to participate in public drinking places as public active drinkers. They no longer require the assistance of a man. This is the influence of the Feminist Movement.
While it is empowering to see independent actresses in alcohol advertisements, it is a drawback to take a solely feministic approach. For example, if she were autonomous, of all the poses she could have chosen, why lie down in peril (Figure 2)? On the same token, why did she choose to wear the bikini (Figure 3)? By taking off the “rose-colored” glasses and looking for potential signs of the male gaze, I theorize that it is still present, albeit subtle. The men leaving the frame does not equate the male gaze vanishing. According to John Berger, just as nude paintings imply an awareness of being seen by the spectator,[14] the particular choice of clothes, poses, and texts in Figure 2 and Figure 3 imply the spectatorship of an audience – the male audience. In Figure 2, the silver silk dress silhouette resembles the bottle of vodka’s shape. It is also an enticing dress, revealing most of her upper body. With one hand swiftly touching her hair, she lies on a cloudy, smooth carpet floor, looking alluringly at the camera. The text below reads, “It leaves you breathless!”[15] It is possible that the sentence refers to the vodka bottle, but it is equally possible that it refers to the woman. We observe a similar structure of representation in Figure 3: A blond woman in her bikinis holds a glass of Martini, while the texts reads “Irresistible,”[16] placed at the same level as her eyes and lips. Again, the woman is advertised to be just as “Irresistible” as the Martini. The women are portrayed as decorative roles and these observations render an unrealistic depiction of the female gender in which they are positioned in sexual and alluring positions.[17] The use of strong, emotional, and psychological words like “breathless” and “irresistible” and the solitary framing of the women in the advertisements allowed alcohol companies to avert accusations of sexual degradation of women and instead contribute the Feminist Movement’s triumph of female autonomy. Even when there are signs of men serving women, the advertisement can still be a product for the masculine pleasure (Figure 4).
Figure 4
At first glance, the oversaturated tones of pink may suggest femininity and the courteous gesture of serving beer from the man to the woman and the challenging gaze from the woman may imply she is in control of the advertisement. However, the feministic effects are in fact in competition with the male-centric effects. The female figure is lying on the floor and looking up to a male figure cut off from the frame except his two hands pouring the beer. These are signifiers of submissiveness, as the woman is suppressed to a lower state of power than the man despite him out of the frame. The advertisement also employs a technique called the Droite effect, where the entire frame of the ad recursively appears within itself. The repeated frame is a vinyl record cover, evidenced by the phrase “Living Stereo”[18]– whose name is on the cover – and “RCA Victor”[19]– whose name is on the vinyl record. Subtly, but intentionally, the recursive frame only reveals the female model and hides the gentleman’s hands pouring the beer with the purpose of further objectifying the woman as something that can be replicable for other types of advertisements. In this respect, she is objectified to be no different from the record player next to her, or the vinyl record cover, or the alcohol ad itself. She loses her identity as she is there only to be approached by a man and offer her beer. It is the consequence of having women entering public drinking places without acknowledging the long denigration of women dating back to the 1950s that produces such derogatory images of female objectification and sexualization.
After analyzing the visual elements of the culture of alcohol advertising in both decades, it is important to compare the findings. As pointed out earlier in the paper, the objectification of women in 1950s’s alcohol advertising is predicted to linger into the 1960s era. Not only did the visual analyses of 1960s’s alcohol advertising confirm our theory, but the findings also found that the extent to which the women is degraded is far worse in that they are both objectified and sexualized in the 1960s. In the 1950s, it can be argued that there is little sexualization of women in the advertisements. The limited prospect of being wives and mothers might imply sexuality, but the visual representation for the female figure is not necessarily alluring or seductive. It also would not fit the narrative of a competent “lady of the house,” which is part of the idealized illustration of American life that companies tried to convey in order to attract male consumers. In the 1960s, however, because we are not constrained by said narrative, alcohol advertising companies would have to find other methods to maintain their predominantly male consumers. As the visual analyses suggest, women are given dominance of the ad, but are highly sexualized, placed in submissive situations,[20] and even made to resemble the product so that men would consume more and more.[21] If one is not aware of the male gaze’s function, it can be detrimental to contribute all the visual elements in the advertisements to the result of the Feminist Movement, which will have everyone accept a false expectation of the female gender role. Women might project the images of these female models onto themselves to conform to society or to be happy. Men might expect women will behave passively if he offers her beer. Public health researchers of alcohol studies point out that “these new active gender roles co-exist alongside the sexualization and objectification of women, particularly in the marketing of brands targeted at males (e.g beer).”[22] In fact, he even suggested that such content could lead to normalization and “blind spots” for sexual violence towards women.
The current findings from this paper add to a growing body of literature on the male gaze and its effect on the representation of women throughout the 1950s-1960s era. First, it suggests that while 1960s women are gaining more freedom and opportunities in alcohol advertising thanks to the Feminist Movement, they are still held back by the earlier era of the 1950s of subversively serving men. The overwhelming objectification towards women in alcohol advertising was so strong in the 1950s that it lingers throughout the 1960s and disrupts how women then was represented as it competed against the Feminist Movement – Though it is only her in the frame, she still falls prey to the male gaze. Second, in what might appear as gaining independence, the 1960s female model taking up the entire frame of the advertisement are, in fact, isolated to be sexualized and giving pleasure to the male-centric audience, something that could not be done in the 1950s where the woman is, at most, objectified to be a housewife and assistant to the man. Women in the 1960s are being both objectified and sexualized by the male gaze that is not even fully apparent to the mass audience. As a result, the paper brings awareness to what otherwise is a dangerous misrepresentation of women in society as the subversively vulnerable, the active drinkers and the sexual subjects that are at the mercy of the patriarchy and the male gaze.
1 Bernhard Kettemann, “Semiotics of Advertising and the Discourse of Consumption,” Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, no.1 (2013): 54-55.
2 Samantha Vandermeade, “Fort Lipstick and the Making of June Cleaver: Gender Roles in American Propaganda and Advertising, 1941-1961” (thesis, North Carolina State University, 2015), 2.
3 Vandermeade, “Gender Roles in American Advertising,” 2.
4“Beer Belongs … Enjoy It,” Brookston Beer Bulletin, accessed May 10, 2021,
https://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/beer-belongs/.
5 Adam Anderson, Bridgette Martin Hard, James Gross and Toni Schmader, Interactive Psychology: People in Perspective (W. W. Norton & Company, 2020), chap. 9, https://digital.wwnorton.com/interactivepsych. 6 Gross, Schmader, Hard, Anderson, Interactive Psychology, chap. 7.
7“Gathered around the piano,” Advertisement from
https://www.advertisingarchives.co.uk/index.php?service=search&action=do_quick_search&language=en&q=alcoh ol+USA+1950s, and “Thanksgiving Dinner,” Advertisements from
https://www.advertisingarchives.co.uk/index.php?service=search&action=do_quick_search&language=en&q=alcoh ol+USA+1950s.
8“Quiet evening at home,” Advertisement from
https://www.advertisingarchives.co.uk/index.php?service=search&action=do_quick_search&language=en&q=alcoh ol+USA+1950s
9 Christina Catalano, “Shaping the American Woman: Feminism and Advertising in the 1950s,” in Constructing the Past (Illinois Wesleyan University, 2002), 46-50.
10 Anderson, Hard, Gross, Schmader,, Interactive Psychology, chap. 13.
11 Vandermeade, “Gender Roles in American Advertising,” 2.
12 Joanne Meyerowitz, “Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, 1946- 1958,” review of The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan, W. W. Norton & Company, February 19, 1963.
13 Kaitlynn Mendes, Feminism in the News: Representations of the Women's Movement Since the 1960s (Springer, 2011),
14 John Berger, “Ways of Seeing, Episode 2,” filmed in 1972, video, 6:50,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU_RToLqOsA&ab_channel=BillFriedmanVideos.
15“It Leaves You Breathless,” Advertisement from
https://www.advertisingarchives.co.uk/?service=search&action=do_quick_search&language=en&mode=&q=alcoho l+USA+1960s&qw=&page=2&grid_layout=4&grid_thumb=20.
16“Irresistible,” Advertisement from
https://www.advertisingarchives.co.uk/?service=search&action=do_quick_search&language=en&mode=&q=alcoho l+USA+1960s&qw=&page=2&grid_layout=4&grid_thumb=20
17 Kim Bartel Sheehan, “Gender and Advertising,” in Controversies in Contemporary Advertising (SAGE Publishing, 2014), 97-99.
18“Budweiser,” advertisement from
https://www.advertisingarchives.co.uk/index.php?service=search&action=do_quick_search&language=en&q=alcoh ol+USA+1960s.
19“Budweiser.”
20“It Leaves You Breathless,” “Irresistible,” “Budweiser.”
21“Budweiser.”
22 Amanda Marie Atkinson, Harry Sumnall, Emma Begley and Lisa Jones, “A Rapid Narrative Review of Literature on Gendered Alcohol Marketing and its Effects: Exploring the Targeting and Representation of Women,” Public Health Institute of Liverpool John Moores University (October 2019), 10.