Feminists, Feminisms, and Advertising

Some Restrictions Apply

Contributions by Jillian M. Báez, Carolyn Bronstein, Catherine A. Coleman, Juliet Dee, Jean M. Grow, Xiaoqi Han, Leandra Hinojosa Hernández, Joanna L. Jenkins, Jacqueline Lambiase Texas Christian University, Karen L. Mallia, Dara Persis Murray, Ann Marie Nicolosi, Wanhsiu Sunny Tsai, Kimberly Wilmot Voss, Jeanie E. Wills, Kasey Windels Edited by Kim Golombisky University of South Florida, Peggy J. Kreshel

Publication date:

16 October 2017

Length of book:

408 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

238x158mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781498528269

Women and advertising are both globally ubiquitous. Yet advertising remains one of the most unabashedly misogynist, heterosexist, and racist industries. This edited volume of original unpublished chapters is the first ever to offer explicitly feminist views on advertising. Feminists, Feminisms, and Advertising provides feminist analyses of the historical relationships between the advertising industry and the women’s movement in the United States. Contributors consider the ways that advertisers encode race, ethnicity, gender, and heteronormativity into advertising practices and messages exported around the world. They further explore the ways that intersectional audiences such as women of color, Latinas, and lesbian and gay audiences decode, reinterpret, resist, and subvert advertising. With this book, the editors and contributors address the present lack of feminist scholarship, research, knowledge, or curriculum in advertising, and begin a more honest dialogue about diversity and intersectional gender in the advertising academy as well as the advertising industry.

Acknowledgments

Part 1: Histories of Feminists, Feminisms, and Advertising

Chapter 1: Introductory Remarks on the Advertising Business and a Community of Feminist Scholars Making Advertising Their Business
Peggy Kreshel
Chapter 2: Women versus Brands: Sexist Advertising and Gender Stereotypes Motivate Transgenerational Feminist Critique
Jacqueline Lambiase, Carolyn Bronstein, and Catherine A. Coleman
Chapter 3: The Entangled Politics of Feminists, Feminism, Advertising, and Beauty: A Historical Perspective
Dara Persis Murray
Chapter 4: “Don’t You Love Being a Woman?” Advertising, Empowerment, and the Women’s Movement
Ann Marie Nicolosi

Part 2: Encoding: Feminist Critiques of Advertising Professionals and Practices

Chapter 5: Black Women and Advertising Ethics: A Womanist Perspective
Joanna L. Jenkins
Chapter 6: “What’s Wrong, You Can’t Take a Joke?” Advertisers’ Defenses of Images of Violence against Women in Their Ads, 1979–1989
Juliet Dee
Chapter 7: Exceptional Exemplars: Practitioners’ Perspectives on Ads that Communicate Effectively with Women and Men
Kasey Windels
Chapter 8: The Creative Career Dilemma: No Wonder Ad Women Are Mad Women
Karen L. Mallia
Chapter 9: Exporting Gender Bias: Anglo-American Echoes in Swedish Advertising Creative Departments
Jean M. Grow

Part 3: Decoding: Feminist Analyses of Intersectional Advertising Audiences

Chapter 10: Engaging in Consumer Citizenship: Latina Audiences and Advertising in Women’s Ethnic Magazines
Jillian M. Báez
Chapter 11: “You Get a Very Conflicting View”: Postfeminism, Contradiction, and Women of Color’s Responses to Representations of Women in Advertisements
Leandra H. Hernández
Chapter 12: Social Exclusion and Gay Consumers’ Boycott and Buycott Decisions
Wanhsiu Sunny Tsai and Xiaoqi Han

Part 4: Professional Development: Historiography and Biography

Chapter 13: The Curious Story of Home Economics’ Contribution to Women’s Careers in Advertising, 1940s to 1960s
Kimberly Wilmot Voss
Chapter 14: A Woman’s Place: Career Success and Early Twentieth Century Women’s Advertising Clubs
Jeanie E. Wills
Chapter 15: Closing Arguments: A Feminist Education for Advertising Students
Kim Golombisky
About the Editors and Contributors

Golombisky and Kreshel provide an original and much-needed feminist exploration of the multiple ways women have engaged advertising, both as workers within the industry and as targeted consumers. The authors in this anthology tackle the historical and contemporary workplace culture in advertising’s creative departments, as well as how women audiences make sense of advertising’s messages—both areas that have long needed the kind of comprehensive and theoretically-informed approach this book provides. In doing so, they address a broad range of issues affecting women and the advertising industry, including ethics, intersectionality, commodity feminism, women of color as audiences, the sexism within the gendered silos that are the creative departments, and feminist education for advertising students. The book is a must-read for advertising students, instructors, and professionals—anyone in or thinking of entering the advertising industry—as well as anyone trying to make sense of the industry’s messages for or about women.